Free Trieste

Behind the fake supporters of Independence compromised with weapons and drug there is the structure of the system of illegality and corruption of Trieste

Free Trieste is not holding this press conference because of political conflicts with other organizations. The press conference depends on the results of our own and of authoritative investigations about the developments of a greater and much more serious situation of illegality, criminality, and corruption. This situation causes serious harm to Trieste and to the International Community, however, the Italian Government, entrusted with the Free Territory of Trieste‘s special administration, tolerates it.

Because of the Italian Government’s negligence in this respect, Free Trieste, the Movement leading the political-diplomatic action for the Free Territory and of its international Free Port, is going to address another complaint to the UN. Indeed, since 1947, the UNSC is the main legal guarantor of the people of the Free Territory and of their rights.

The Free Territory of Trieste is a UN Member State de jure, and Free Trieste’s complaint to the UN directly refers to the “United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime” (UNTOC) as adopted by the UNGA on November 15th, 2000 and on May 31st, 2001.

Free Trieste would also like to address that its appeals to Italian authorities (be it the judiciary or public security forces) is not contradictory, because the administering Government has the duty to ensure law and order in the administered Free Territory through them. Indeed, the lack of Italian jurisdiction over the Free Territory does not imply impunity for crimes committed in Trieste.

It was two experts, who are since long working together, to carry out our investigation: Roberto Giurastante, environmentalist and Free Trieste’s President, whose important reports and denounces – collected in his book “Tracce di legalità” (Tracks of legality) – are well known and make him the Triestine Saviano; Paolo G. Parovel, investigative journalist and director of investigative newspaper “La Voce di Trieste” (The voice of Trieste), author of very important, well known dossiers and cooperation with Slovene, Italian, European, and American (USA) analysis centers. Because of this, through the years, both of them suffered retaliations, press censorship, and even serious intimidations.

Trieste’s criminal framework is absolutely abnormal. Behind a façade of law and order, because regular criminality is scarce as well as prosecuted, Trieste’s establishment is highly corrupt, yet, this is tolerated and covered up by the very authorities, more than in the similarly corrupt Italian system.

This abnormal situation depends on the fact that after 1954, when the Italian Government received a special trusteeship mandate over the Free Territory of Trieste, it established and maintained a local, powerful network there. This network grants to it unconditioned loyalty to Italy, and in exchange it enjoys economic advantages and impunities for its own corruption and crimes, including very serious ones.

Securing the local establishment’s impunity was and still is the task of a peculiar branch of the Italian secret services, which acts also through special Government office such as the former Ufficio Affari Riservati (Office of Confidential Affairs) the former Ufficio Centrale per le Zone di Confine (Central Office for Bordering Areas) and their successors: Offices that took up the same roles and currently holders ow a huge power over not only mass media, but also weaker, local public officers.

This unusual treatment turned Trieste into some “hidden reserve” of nearly complete impunity for mid-high-profile criminality, including connections among politics, mafias, and institutionalized corruption, in the “fixing” of tendering procedures, polluting dumping grounds, and legal abuses against the weak (the poor, elderly, minors or disabled persons).

This means also that as society reacts weakly, Trieste’s main economic and productive resources could be gradually plundered: be it shipyards or other big companies. Same goes for the suffocation of Trieste’s international Free Port for the advantage of Italian ports.

Currently, and under full complicity of the Italian political establishment and press, three operations against Trieste’s Free Port are in progress. One is international, two are local, but all of them are certainly the result of political interests and big criminal cartels having joint interests.

The international operation consists in diverting the traffics of the Baltic-Adriatic route, which are worth billions of Euro, from the natural ports of Trieste and Koper to the Italian ports in western Adriatic and in the Ionio, to Brindisi and Taranto, as well as to the Tyrrhenian Gioia Tauro. Indeed, it is almost all ports controlled by organized criminality.

Locally, the operations consist in the attempted to eliminate the Northern Free Port by urbanizing it, promoting a building speculation worth EUR 1,5 billion, and in paralyzing the Southern Free Port (and the TAL – TransAlpine Leitung) with an old-fashioned and dangerous LNG terminal, a project of multinational Gas Natural’s Italian branch.

All three these operations enjoy the support of a strong Italian formation, across the board. To achieve its goal, this formation is aggressively attempting to seize the Port Authority’s Presidency, and is obviously working together with companies and circles under serious questions due to possible involvements with the Mafia.

Indeed, Gas Natural’s Italian branch is confiscated by Palermo’s anti-Mafia division.

On its side, the Northern Free Port’s urbanization is illegal, because it is an area under constraints of international law, as well as having attracted people currently investigated for connections with the ‘ndrangeta and Sicilian mafia, or for corruption, for example, businessman Maltauro, all while while the urbanization of the Northern Free Port is illegal – as it is a bounded, international public area – and it involved or still involves persons investigated for being bounded to the ‘ndrangheta or Sicilian Mafia, or bribing and, among these, businessman Maltauro, who confessed to bribes in Milan, and Rizzani de Eccher, currently under anti-mafia restrictions in Udine.

In a normal city, such abnormal situation would have been stopped and put under investigation since a long time Instead, in Trieste, the local “system” of impunities and censorship continues to deny it in spite of all the evidences. So much so that the only ones talking about it and denouncing it are, politically, Free Trieste, which is also defending the Free Port internationally, and on the press La Voce di Trieste.

This is why, in the past months, Free Trieste and La Voce were publicly attacked very violently. The main targets were Free Trieste’s President-investigator, Roberto Giurastante and investigative journalist and director of La Voce Paolo G. Parovel, who is also one of the Movement’s representatives.

It is attacks that revealed also factors that are not related to politics, rather, to criminality. It is elements increasingly dangerous, for the following reasons.

In mid-April this year [2014], Roberto Giurastante for Free Trieste and Paolo G. Parovel with La Voce di Trieste, both revealed new confidential information, later confirmed by investigative sources, about an imminent increment in the dangerousness of the entanglement of political circles and of the ‘ndrangheta, which seemingly wants to force the massive and illegal housing speculation against the Northern Free Port even with violent actions against its opponents.

It results that in Trieste the ‘ndrangheta controls already financial operations, including in the housing market, even in Istria, and also cocaine traffics.

Making this alarm public prevented that risk, therefore, it was immediately substituted with an extremely violent, “spontaneous” counter-campaign on line, denying the existence of connections among politicians and organized crime, discrediting the persons of Giurastante and Parovel presenting them as insane and enemies of the Free Territory, inciting hate and violence against them, as well as organizing a “golpe” within the Free Trieste Movement in order to seize it with controllable heads.

The suspect that the “golpe” from the inside was actually caused from the outside appeared obvious, and also confirmed by the operation showing professional schemes of propaganda war, as well as being lead by ambiguous persons who used, without remorse, illicit means like occupying the Movement’s online media, inventing fake news, insulting, defaming, selling procedures against its Statute as correct, illegally taking money and the list of the organization’s members, sieging the Piazza della Borsa 7 office, abusing Free Trieste’s name and insignias.

All of this with the support of the press and the factual indolence of Italian prosecuting and public security forces, despite our complaints to them.

The “golpe” attempt was possible only because Free Trieste gained its forces only in 2013, in a spontaneous, extraordinary bloom of popular support and members (for times those of the local Italian Democratic Party – PD) which, on the other side, didn’t allow to distance undesired and infiltrate people promptly.

Roberto Giurastante’s presidency itself, the one that started organizing and cleaning up the Movement, is in place only since January 18th, 2014.

The group involved in the golpe was and is made of some former managers, most of whom are from Italian right-wing nationalist political circles, and by a “security” group made of about 50 people they included in the Movement, was at their orders, and was effective but also a source of embarrass because of its pervasive actions and violent means. About 100 others followed them, with a total of about 200 people, out of Free Trieste’s 2,500 supporters.

The same gang had since some time taken hold of two of the Movement’s parallel organizations: Trieste Libera impresa and a small LLC established under British law and based in London, which calls itself “Triest NGO” claiming to be a British-Government recognized non-government organization.

As the “golpe” failed, the aforementioned gang had to make a new organization for itself, one with the curious name “Movimento Territorio Libero al cubo” (Cubic Free Territory), consisting in the aforementioned few followers and violent security group, which is its own internal current.

This new Movement, despite being so small, has also shown to have lots of money as it rents, furnishes, and fully provides for a new big office in via Roma 28. It does even hire its own staff, while the much bigger Free Trieste Movement is fully based on foundrisings and volunteering.

The small, but well-finances new via Roma 28 Movement continued the violent, defamatory attacks against Free Trieste, as well as attempting to sabotage the international stand for Trieste’s independence with claims of former “Zone B” against Slovenia and Croatia. It is traditional actions of the Italian right and neo-fascist wing, as are the intolerant attitudes of their “security” gang.

In view of all of this, we consider it obvious that theirs is only a fake pro-independence organization, which serves as a disturbance factor, and it is controlled by interests that go against the Free Territory of Trieste and its people. The only effective action for the Free Territory is international, peaceful, and grounded in the law.

In the meantime, Free Trieste has deeply investigated the behavior of the main promoters of this “golpe” discovering their compromises with the circles of cocaine traffics, money laundering, and the illegal use of weapons. All actions that appear coherent with the profile of the Italian political-criminal consociation that is attempting to eliminate Free Trieste to force the massive, illegal building and housing speculation in the Northern Free Port.

It is compromises that took place behind the Movement’s back, and we are about to explain them. The starting year is 2013. This is why it is also possible imagining that the compromises aimed at “engaging” with weak or available heads of the Movement in order to influence it or destroying it with arrests and trials as needed. However, the expulsion of such former managers cuts short both operations.

All of our statements on the subject are properly grounded in investigative evidences and documents, and consist in the main, following facts:

1) The core of those leading the via Roma gang responsible of the “golpe” resulted to have close ties with a Triestine man, Andrea Rotta, who later turned out to be a drug dealer and cocaine trafficker, even arrested for it in November 2013; before his arrest, thanks to those people (who invited him to join the Movement) he presented himself as agent and economic promoter of Trieste Libera Impresa, and as Triest NGO’s advisor. Surprisingly, the press remained silent about his conviction in June [2014] despite the local media spreading much information about his arrest.

During the press conference, we show the images of the leading group of the Golpe on the boat of Mr. Rotta and a photo about his arrest:

2) It is within such ties that the core of those leading the via Roma gang responsible of the “golpe” results to have received also offers involving money laundering for very large amounts of money, both through “Triest NGO” ‘s bank account (getting to keep 4% of the sum) and through credi card purchases (getting to keep 25% of the sum).

The second proposal took place in Izola, Slovenia, during a meeting with a well-known dealer as part of contacts with Croatian NGO “WORLD YOUTH BANK Network – WYBN”, the same which the “golpe” gang tried to sell, in Trieste, as a UN organization.

3) The same leaders of the via Roma gang involved in the “golpe” continues to sell as British-based NGO and as a bridge with UN authorities a private limited company called “Triest” which is also keeping money it received by Free Trieste for the purpose of international lawsuits.

However, it turns out that “Triest” is just a private limited company: British authorities have not approved its application for NGO yet. Furthermore, it results that the same leaders of the via Roma gang involved in the “golpe” are offering, through the aforementioned Trieste Libera Impresa, subscription bonuses and legal offices in the Free Port, however, they have no authority to do so.

4) Investigations of both Italian and Slovene police further reveal that certain members of the via Roma “security group” which includes previous offenders for cocaine-related crimes and other offenses, therefore barred from receiving an Italian license to bear arms, are training with military arms in Slovenia. Taking advantage of Slovene law on shooting ranges, which is less strict than Italian regulations, they use mining sites as shooting ranges.

Investigative authorities collected enough information and wiretapping to prove that this group has access to weapons and ammunition even in the Trieste area. In the wiretapping, the via Roma leaders express very violent intentions against Italian authorities, and violent hostility to Free Trieste’s leaders.

During the press conference, we show a collage of significant documents from the investigation file, yet, hiding properly the main identification signs of both investigators and investigated persons.

5) Finally, in recent days, investigative sources from both Slovenia and Italy provided alarming information about the possibility that the aforementioned gangs that train with weapons may get new ones and even be manipulated by thier parties in order to commit serious crimes, which would be used to discredit the peaceful and civil action for the rights of all the supporters of Trieste’s independence.

Furthermore, we need to address the fact that besides bearing arms, in past weeks some dangerous members of this “security group” beaten up a policeman in piazza della Borsa and were not jailed for it.At this point, we don’t understand why the local Italian authorities let them be, while Slovene Special Forces have already taken prompt action in their national territory.

This is why Free Trieste decide to take a public stand in the name of common interest with this public denounce and action addressed to the UN. The Movement wants to prevent any risk, as well as forcing the administering Italian Government to recognize this state of things and take all prompt measures so that nothing worse happens.