The fact does not exist. After seven years of trial and fourteen years of investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office into the "red mud" case, the top management of Eurallumina, a company from Portovesme, were acquitted.
This is what the first criminal section of the Court decided at the end of the hearing, dropping the accusation of environmental disaster against the managing director Vincenzo Rosino and the plant manager Nicola Candeloro . The judges also ordered the release of the dock .
Prosecutor Marco Cocco had deemed the rest prescribed. The accusation was that of environmental disaster in competition and illicit trafficking of waste, in some cases special and dangerous.
The investigation was launched in 2009 with the accusation of environmental disaster and with the seizure of the red mud basin of Portovesme, in the province of Carbonia-Iglesias, used by Eurallumina. In addition to the two basins, the seals had also appeared in the adjacent areas affected by the release of water contaminated by red mud. The defendants are defended by the lawyers Luigi and Pierluigi Concas, and by Carlo Sotgiu and Francesco Tonelloto.
Today in front of the courthouse in Cagliari the environmentalists of the Carlofortini Concerned Committee and the Adiquas Association organized a sit-in, which for some time have been following the preliminary hearings together with the Sardinian Trade Union Confederation (formed as a civil party), Assotziu, the City School Committee, Sardinia Clean, Portoscuso Farmers Committee and Paringianu Winemakers Committee. Environmentalists have strongly criticized the ruling which drops all charges because the fact does not exist.