TRIESTE: MAFIA AND LNG TERMINALS
News about the opening of investigations about Mafia infiltrations in Gas Natural Fenosa confirms many years of denounces. And an actual danger which expands to anywhere the Iberian company is settles. Including Trieste, where Gas Natural Fenosa had a pending project for regasification terminal in the Port of Trieste.
Since years, I am standing first in line against the project of this devastating regasification terminal, even with pending lawsuits. I reported its irregularities in front of the judiciary authorities.
In 2013 I introduced the question at the E.U. Parliament) emphasizing that the 1947 Italian Peace Treaty ranks above Community law, the legislation Gas Natural and the Italian authorities invoked in their attempt to force a LNG terminal in Trieste’s International Port, blocking its maritime traffic.
This, among the many battles which I have sustained, has certainly been one of the hardest. For opposing the project, Gas Natural has sued me, the proceeding is pending: they accuse me of offending them, while I only told the truth.
I told the story of this uneven struggle of the few against a powerful illegal system in my book “Tracce di Legalità” [Tracks of Legality], published in 2012: in the book I revealed the bonds of the Spanish multinational company, Gas Natural, with “Cosa Nostra”.
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Abstract: from investigative book “Tracce di legalità” – Tracks of Legality:
Let Mafia rip: when gas catches the interest of Cosa Nostra
The business of LNG terminals must be also considered from the perspective of how organized criminality attempts to get involved with it. Gas is among the most profitable products, and this is why it certainly cannot avoid the tentacles of the many criminal organizations that Italy certainly doesn’t lack. And no less than Gas Natural itself results involved in an operation with Mafia undertones.
Certified Italian Mafia of course, since the connections link back to Bernardo Provenzano. It appears that this “super boss” controlled the construction of several gas pipelines in Sicily, also founding a company for this very purpose: the Gasdotti Azienda Siciliana (Pipeline Company Sicily) also known as GAS.
Also, chances are this was only the first step to climb the gas business ladder, up to the international level. The objective was purchasing gas of Kazakhstan, and then to sell it to BG, the third oil company in the UK, using the pipeline of Russian company Gazprom, the leading world producer of natural gas.
At the beginning, the deal was $ 146 million for 1 billion of cubic meters of gas, to allow Cosa Nostra entering the élite of the international trade of energy. The plan was ambitious: 6 billion of cubic meters of gas each year would have granted incomes of more than EUR 876 billion. The GAS S.p.a. was established in 1981, but soon it became the main private gas supplier in Sicily, with 93,000 customers in 73 towns.
A company grown in the shadow of Vito Ciancimino, mayor of Palermo and a trusted man of Provenzano; the manager is lawyer Gianni Lapis. After the death of Vito Ciancimino, the management of business passes down to his son, Massimo, who played a role in a previous operation ended on January 13rd, 2014, with the sale of GAS to Spanish company Gas Natural for EUR 116 million.
Another company, Sirco, re-invsted the money earned selling the GAS in a series of operations concluded with the acquisition of Rumanian company KRIS, leader in the sector of waste disposal, as well as of half of Serbian company LP GAS, which supplies Belgrade with gas. And this interest for the Balkan might as well be the link between the interests of Cosa Nostra and the LNG terminal in Trieste.
As for the business of gas terminals, an important role would be that of ACEGAS-APS, the multi-utility involved in both waste treatment and energy supply, under the control of the Municipalities of Trieste and of Padova, a company that is working hard to expand in the Balkan market. The LNG terminal in Trieste would be in a strategic position, and its capacity of 8 billion cubic meters of gas each year would make it possible entering forcefully the same Balkans that Cosa Nostra is attempting to colonize.
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I cannot but emphasize that in the ongoing, lynching and mudslinging campaign against me as President of the Free Trieste Movement they attack me for daring to oppose – way before others did – the devastation of our Territory reporting those responsible. The judiciary protected those people almost every time: polluters are free, while the environment is doomed to pollution and devastation.
Blogger Andrea Rodriguez claims that I have unfairly accused some “unfortunate people” – including Gas Natural – simply because I was seeking attention.
According to him, I am “out of mind” and they are my victims: nobody is responsible for the environmental disaster of Trieste. What a “Mafia like” mentality they have: they have a rather different idea of how the FTT should be like, to me, the FTT ought to be a State based on the rule of law.
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“Persecutor” Giurastante and his harmless “victims” (Mara Armani comments Andrea Rodriguez’s post):
Ma Ra Armani Good Andrea!
The thing is, not everyone knew that character [Giurastante] before, and not all as few know how much trouble he cause to some unfortunate people with his baseless complaints. Instead, he is very careful not to tell how many of his complaints were dismissed without investigations.
Translated from blog “Ambiente e Legalità” – “Environment and Legality” by Roberto Giurastante