14 arrested in anti-mafia operation against waste trafficking in Italy

Italian police on Thursday arrested 14 people in an operation carried out in Rome, Naples and Salerno against waste trafficking.

The operation was ordered by the Anti-mafia District Directorate (DDA) in Rome, and targeted alleged members of the Camorra, the crime syndicate based in the southern region of Campania.

According to prosecutors, the criminal group was led by Camorra boss Pietro Cozzolino, whose clan operates in the deprived areas of Ercolano and Portici in the province of Naples.

Several raids and seizure of unspecified assets were also carried out in the operation, police said.

Those arrested allegedly managed an illegal trafficking "of large quantities of hazardous waste" including textile materials, with the aggravating factor of the business being run "in more than one country", according to prosecutors.

Major mafia organizations in Italy have long been expanding their illegal businesses to trafficking of waste, including toxic and hazardous one.

A 2014 report by Italian environmental group Legambiente estimated that more than 29,000 environmental crimes were committed in 2013 in Italy. The illicit trafficking of toxic waste alone was worth some 3.1 billion euro (3.6 billion U.S. dollars) in 2013.

At least 40 percent of environmental crimes were carried out in the southern regions of Campania, Puglia, and Calabria, followed by the northern and most-developed Lombardy region, the report added.

The illicit disposal of garbage was particularly intense in Campania, where several probes ascertained Camorra clans have been dumping and burning toxic waste for at least two decades.

The toxic dumping resulted in an environmental disaster in the region, with higher rates of deaths from cancer and congenital malformations in newborn children registered among the population of the most affected areas, especially between Naples and the city of Caserta. Endi