When Ferruccio Caschili, born in 1939, shows up at number three in via dei Passeri, in the Monte Mixi district of Cagliari, he has clear ideas and a hundred euros in his pocket. The notary who welcomes him records the date and times, status and intentions, all to be written on stamped paper, complete with stamps and sealing wax. It is July 31, 2015. The notary hands are stopped at ten minutes past twelve. The repertoire is 2692, the object of the operation is encrypted behind the deed of incorporation of a limited liability company, simplified and moreover "unipersonal".

Avenue Macchiareddu

The name chosen for the business structure, without a lira in his pocket, says it all: "Nuova Materie Prime Mediterranee srls with sole shareholder". The headquarters is an " avenue" in the industrial district of Assemini, Macchiareddu, a secluded side of the fifth avenue, where the previous business never started, failed before producing the first refrigerator. The corporate object, the one that tells the dreams and desires of the newborn company, is an encyclopaedia of everything to do. The business & waste design seems preconceived, like a puzzle that has to be put together without anyone noticing. The notary annotates the projects and writes them on State paper.

Everything and more

The operating categories recorded are boundless: «exercise of mining activities in general, even in wetlands with the use of suitable machinery and equipment, marketing of inert products for industry, with more specific reference to calcium sulphate, excavation and cultivation of quarries and mines, opencast and non-opencast processing of material, in total and/or partial cycle, including by-products and slag both from own or third-party concession or sub-leased deposits and in any case for negotiable constitutive and/or administrative titles that justify their legitimacy and/or exercise".

Sulphate & toxic-harmful

The map of corporate trades is varied, almost dictated on commission, as if only someone knew the true entrepreneurial mission of a company as mysterious as it is determined. In reality, few people, perhaps not even the pensioner who makes up the company, have an idea of what calcium sulphate is, the waste and by-products to be recycled in wetlands. Out of caution, as a way out, should the recycling business go awry, the notary also notes in the deed of incorporation the second level of interest of the newly formed company: «management and exploitation of quarries to be allocated also to controlled landfills, removal, collection, transport and disposal of urban solid waste, sludge, liquids, including industrial, dangerous, toxic and noxious waste and anything else permitted and granted». The final paragraph reveals most of all what cannot be said, such as those "codicilli" written with the final asterisk in the contracts to be read with a magnifying glass: «Participating in tenders and competitions, signing conventions and contracts for the activation and management of quarries and for the collection, treatment and disposal of any type of waste».

100 euros in your pocket

The ambition is boundless, but it breaks down when it comes to paying the share capital of the company characterized by the ancient motto "I do everything, but I don't have the money". The founding report is a confession without appeal: "Mr. Ferruccio Caschili paid the administrative body, which issues a full and discharging receipt, the sum of 100.00 euros (one hundred point zero zero) in cash". Not really a treasure, if anything a circumspect and laughable handout. The climb to the world of waste begins like this: a pensioner, who died last year, and 100 euros, capital fully paid up, in cash, for a company born with clear ideas and tight deadlines. That the operation had been planned down to the smallest detail was evident only to the well-informed, business-corporate camouflage experts, starting from the most circumspect precautions of a strictly "limited", "simplified" and "single-member" company up to the anonymous shareholder single with one hundred euros in his pocket.

Ten days for Enalotto

In reality, what was supposed to be a very simple company with a thousand ambitions and little hope would soon turn into an operation with many zeros, as if out of the blue the lucky pensioner had played Enalotto, betting 100 euros to earn , shortly after, millions upon millions. From that Friday 31 July 2015, the day of the establishment of the anonymous company "poor in the barrel" and "all do", just ten days have passed. It's a short step from poverty to unbridled wealth: just enough to get from Macchiareddu, an abandoned warehouse, closed forever, as giant as two 15-metre-high football fields, to the industrial area of Portovesme, the primordial alcove of the multinationals, before the State and then Swiss. Ten days of passion to pass from the darkness of a cheap company to a financial "vehicle" destined to ferry, from Sulcis to the industrial gates of Cagliari, a marching column of waste and money.

The Swiss are waiting for it

When the retiree of "Nuova Materia Prime Mediterranee", the hundred-euro company, walks through the door of Portovesme srl, he does not know that the Sardinian managers of Glencore are waiting for him, the multinational that in the world, only in 2022, invoiced beauty of 256 billion dollars. There are not many pleasantries to consume, the contract between the billionaire colossus based a stone's throw from Zurich and the simple and limited company of the Santa Gilla bank is already beautiful than written. The date is imprinted in the first paragraph: «contract V.15.014 of 10 August 2015» . If the math of the calendar isn't an opinion, ten days have passed since the establishment of the company to the stipulation of this mega-contract of waste to be transformed into rich prizes and cocktail parties. The substance can be summarized: the company with sole shareholder, with one hundred euros of capital, just ten days after its incorporation, signs a contract worth a thousand and one nights. In practice, the Swiss giant entrusts an unknown company with the task of "emptying" the Portovesme plant of what, commonly and simplistically, they, the Swiss sellers, call "chalk". In reality, those of Portovesme srl know perfectly well that that material is nothing more than a "special dangerous waste".

The gift of waste

The contract "gives" the Macchiareddu pensioner a mountain of this material for one euro per ton. In practice, 52,000 tons are the first renewable "package" to be taken away from the Portovesme site. The multinational, for that waste, is adept at getting paid a little and "donating" a lot. On the one hand, he collects one euro per ton of "gypsum" from the pensioner, who, however, in return, receives in turn, from the same multinational, the beauty of 26 euros for each ton of waste to be taken away. A payment justified as «Contribution to the transport and management of that waste». A good deal for the multinational: instead of spending 290 euros per ton to send that material to landfills, according to the investigators, they entrust it, turnkey, to the pensioner who collects with his company, between the purchase and the contribution of Portovesme srl, the beauty of 25 euros per ton. Basically, with a company with a capital of 100 euros, just ten days after its establishment, the pensioner's company receives a contract from the multinational for a "trafficking" of waste, according to what the investigators write, which will bring him no less than three or four million euros.

Saving landfill

An innate sense of business could be said, a pity, however, that that material will have to be "hidden" in a hurry inside that shed in Macchiareddu. All in the hypothetical wait for someone to buy it and take it away to do who knows what with it. A someone who, of course, will never come. In fact, no one will want to have anything to do with that waste. They will remain there to rot, almost causing that gigantic shed to explode, filled in every order of places, now close to collapsing, transformed into a real landfill. In the meantime, however, the corporate structure had been enriched with new protagonists.

Trade unionist & manager

On 14 January 2016, after the signing of the contract with Portovesme srl - Glencore, with notarial deed 2218, Giampaolo Diana, not a stranger, also took over the "white mass" operation. The investigators, in closing the investigation, define him, until March 2015, as an "intermediary consultant of the company Portovesme srl", and then a 20% shareholder of the pensioner's company. But that's not all: Diana was also the number one of the Sardinian CGIL and group leader of the Democratic Party in the Regional Council. With him, under investigation by the Cagliari Prosecutor's Office, Prosecutors Rita Cariello and Rossella Spano, there is also Carlo Lolliri, the former "very powerful" managing director of Portovesme srl, the man of Glencore in Italy. Together with them, among the suspects, there is the new "Swiss" manager, Davide Garofalo, the front man of the "Piano Black Mass", the black mass of battery waste, the ones they would like to recycle right in the Sulcis plant. And finally, among the suspects is "Portovesme srl", daughter of the multibillion-dollar Swiss multinational accused of "giving away" millionaire waste to a company with ten days to live and one hundred euros of capital, which went bankrupt at the right moment, when the "game ” was discovered. All in the poor and devastated land of Sulcis, where multinationals "consume" business, pollute and always lay off.

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