Forestry investigators remained for most of Friday in the Sarroch refinery, taking away a large number of documents late in the evening and putting the seals of the Public Prosecutor's Office around some areas inside the Saras plant. Six managers and managers of the complex, all registered in the register of suspects, were notified of the search and seizure decrees with a single crime hypothesis: environmental disaster. It is impossible, however, to understand at the moment what the rangers have found in the areas subjected to seizure, given that the investigations are still ongoing and the investigators have asked for the intervention of their consultants, some arriving from beyond the Tyrrhenian Sea.
The suspects
Opened in 2017 after the arrival at the Prosecutor's Office of some videos showing an alleged spill of pollutants into the sea in front of the refinery, the investigation file was assigned to the deputy prosecutors Enrico Lussu and Nicola Giua Marassi, remaining for a long time against unknown persons. With the blitz of the men of the Forestry Investigative Unit, led by Commissioner Fabrizio Madeddu, the search orders were notified to the first suspects, all at the top of the establishment or sectors of it. These are the president and CEO of the refinery, Settimio Guarrata, the head of the Health, environment and safety service, Walter Cocco, then again the area manager Antonello Atzori, the safety officer Giuseppe Valentino, the sector expert Antonello Cogoni and of the technician Dario Sanna. The registration in the register of suspects, it must be specified, would not seem in this case to still contain elements of suspicion on the hypothesis of responsibility, but would serve as a guarantee to allow the appointment of partisan consultants.
The kidnappings
In addition to various documents, the investigators of the Forestry Corps of the Region have also seized some areas inside the plant. They would have identified materials or substances related to oil processing that they did not think they would find, but it is premature and risky to talk about pollution. To understand this, prosecutors Lussu and Giua Marassi have appointed a pool of consultants, some of whom come from the Peninsula. Among these, the Piedmontese university professor and biochemist Ivo Pavan stands out, already an expert in various investigations by the former Turin prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello.
The inquiries
The investigation, apparently, aims to understand if there have been spills into the sea (and not only) of pollutants related to oil processing. Saras, when five years ago we heard about the investigation and the videos brought to the Prosecutor's Office, clarified that the images showed "sea water mixed with algae (hence, the dark color) that it had been necessary to move from one side to the other of the stretch of water in front of the small port of the service boats, to avoid the accumulation that would have blocked the anti-pollution means ». In addition to this file, in recent months another has been opened, assigned to the prosecutor Giangiacomo Pilia, on the black smokes recorded between 2020 and 2021. Finally in December the Dda, with the prosecutor Danilo Tronci, closed the investigation arrived from Lombardy on the alleged irregular purchase of crude oil from Iraq in 2016, when the country was in the hands of ISIS. Another investigation for marine pollution by the prosecutor Emanuele Secci had instead been archived after the analyzes and consultations.
Francesco Pinna
