ILVA is to get a super-commissioner
to oversee the clean-up of its controversial and highly
polluting steel plant in the Puglia port city of Taranto,
political sources said Thursday.
Assets frozen in recent government and judicial moves will
be freed up to help defray the "huge" cost of making the
enormous plant safe for those who work there and live around it,
a cabinet decree said.
The supercommissioner, who has yet to be named, will
supervise "urgent environmental work" at the fume-belching
works, the largest steel plant in Europe.
The government stepped in to freeze assets pending the
clean-up after the judiciary ordered the plant's closure because
of unusually high cancer rates in and around Taranto.
In Taranto, Puglia's main port, infant mortality is 21%
higher than in the rest of Puglia, the Higher Health Institute
said last week.
Also Thursday, prosecutors asked for Fabio Riva, son of the
late head of the industrial group that owns the ILVA steelworks,
Emilio Riva, to be given five years and four months in a fraud
trial against him.
The former ILVA executive and ex-deputy chairman of ILVA's
parent company Riva is accused of defrauding the Italian State
of 100 million of euros by illegally taking public
subsidies for exports through the holding company Riva Fire.
Prosecutors also asked the court to confiscate assets worth
over 91 million euros from Riva and his co-defendants in the
trial.
Riva is being tried in absentia pending a decision by the
British authorities over extradition from London, where he
currently resides.
Italy's industry ministry is suing for damages to the tune
of 120 million euros in the case.
A verdict is expected on July 21.
NEW MAN TO TAKE OVER FROM GNUDI.
The new supercommissioner will take over from a former
minister under ex-premier Mario Monti, Piero Gnudi, who only
took over as commissioner on June 6.
Gnudi, who headed the sport and tourism ministry from
November 2011 to April 2013, himself succeeded Enrico Bondi,
whose term ended in June, as special commissioner to oversee
management and clean-up of Europe's largest steel mill.
The ILVA plant has drawn controversy for years over serious
health concerns, culminating in a Save ILVA plan by the Monti
government at the end of 2012 that set out measures to help the
plant survive and preserve as many as 20,000 jobs during
environmental clean-up.
Part of the Taranto plant was seized by judges to cover
some of the costs of cleaning it up and meeting damage claims
related to high levels of cancer in the area, which have
persisted into the present.
In June prosecutors in Taranto said they are investigating
concerns that carpenters working at the plant have suffered
thyroid cancer.
On the same day a Taranto court found 23 former ILVA
managers guilty in connection with a wave of asbestos and other
carcinogen-linked deaths in the port city.
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