Italy police arrest "Gomorrah's businessman" in probe of mob links to garbage removal

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This frame from a video provided by the Italian Guardia di Finanza Custom Police shows an industrial area in Castelvolturno, near Caserta, Italy, belonging to Naples-area businessman Ludovico Ucciero, impounded by Italian police on Wednesday, June 8, 2011 after police arrested Ucciero. Italian police say they have arrested a Naples-area man nicknamed "Gomorrah's businessman" for allegedly helping the Camorra crime clan enrich itself through control of trash removal and incineration. Carabinieri Capt. Piero Rajola Pescarini says police on Wednesday also seized some euro50 million (US$75 million dollars) in assets linked to businessman Ucciero, including four of his garbage companies, 65 vehicles and 20 bank accounts. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Italian Custom Police, ho) EDITORIAL USE ONLY

ROME - Police on Wednesday arrested a Naples-area man nicknamed "Gomorrah's businessman" for allegedly helping a Camorra crime clan enrich itself through control of garbage removal and incineration.

Ludovico Ucciero, who runs four trash removal and incineration companies seized by authorities, was arrested in the town of Castel Volturno near Caserta on suspicion of participation in the organized crime syndicate, said Carabinieri Capt. Pietro Rajola Pescarini.

Ucciero is suspected of helping the Casalesi crime family, a Camorra syndicate clan whose turf war murder spree a few years ago prompted Italy to send in hundreds of soldiers to Casal di Principe and surrounding towns near the mobsters' stronghold in the countryside of Naples.

"There's those who shoot and those who are the businessmen" of the Camorra, Rajola Pescarini said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Also seized among the €50 million ($75 million) in assets linked to Ucciero were 65 trucks, car and other vehicles, 20 bank accounts and dozens of buildings and other property.

"Gomorrah" was a recent bestselling book and movie about Camorra mobsters' domination of local garbage businesses. Much of the Naples area has been marred by mountains of uncollected garbage. Prosecutors say the Camorra's infiltration or outright control of garbage collection, dump sites, incineration and disposal of toxic chemicals and other wastes has worsened the trash problems.

On Tuesday, the Legambiente environmentalist group in its annual report estimated that the Camorra, as well as Sicily's Mafia and the Calabrian-based 'ndrangheta syndicate, together do some €20 billion business a year in actitivies harming the environment. Prime among them is illegal garbage handling, but illegal construction on terrain not suitable for building, such as landslide-prone slopes, also is harmful, environmentalists say.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on Tuesday lamented that organized crime's expansion into activities impacting on the environment is "ever more insidious."

Public anger over Naples' chronic garbage problem was blamed in part for the lopsided loss of Premier Silvio Berlusconi's candidate in the city in last month's mayoral elections. Berlusconi had vowed to rid Naples of its trash problem, but the garbage keeps piling up, including in neighbourhoods frequented by tourists.

Garbage collection, and in particular toxic waste's clandestine removal, have long been considered a lucrative business for Italy's criminal organizations.

Rajola Pescarini, who heads the paramilitary Carabinieri's Rome-based office for crimes hurting the environment, said the probe that led to Ucciero's arrest was bolstered by information from Casalesi turncoats among former aides to imprisoned mob boss Giuseppe Setola.

Setola, a longtime fugitive who once escaped capture by fleeing through a sewer, was arrested in 2009. Investigators have accused the convicted murderer of masterminding the terror spree that bloodied the Caserta area for months last decade during a Camorra power struggle.

Ucciero is suspected of "having a stable relationship with the Casalesi clan that allowed him, over time, to achieve high profits," thanks to mobsters' support for his winning public contracts to transport or dispose of liquid and solid waste, a police statement.

In other crackdowns on Italy's mobsters, police fanned out from north to south to execute some 140 warrants stemming from a probe in Turin into drug trafficking, extortion and loan-sharking of the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate.