ROME: Italian police said Tuesday they had disrupted a criminal group active from Switzerland to Serbia that allegedly turned toxic ashes into BBQ briquettes and fertilizer, while protected by the provincial environmental agency.
Nineteen individuals and three companies are currently under investigation on suspicion of trans-national waste trafficking and fraud in the operation active in Italy, Austria, Germany, Croatia, Serbia and Switzerland, Italy’s carabinieri police said in a statement.
Twelve out of the 19 individuals were arrested and a plant in South Tyrol was seized following the four-year investigation. Contacted by AFP, police would not disclose the nationality of the suspects.
The alleged scheme — which handed the two Italian companies involved “an illicit profit of hundreds of thousands of euros” — involved turning ashes with illegal levels of pollutants into products such as barbeque briquettes, soil improvers, and additives for animal feed and for concrete, they said.
The investigation, which included telephone wiretaps, revealed a network of companies created to manage the entire supply chain, “from the production of the ashes to their distribution on the European market.”
