TACKLING ORGANISED CRIME IN A BID TO SECURE INVESTOR CONFIDENCE IN WIND

摘要

This April, the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia (DIA) of Palermo announced it had completed the confiscation of assets (a record €1.3 billion) belonging to Vito Nicastri, an entrepreneurial plenipotentiary based in the western province of Trapani, and known in Sicily as 'King of the Wind'. His wind farm development empire sold plants on a turnkey basis at a going rate of around €2 million/MW capacity. Crime and corruption crept in at several levels: applications for public grant funding through different legal entities so as to get multiple grants; acquiring land concessions; acquiring operating permits and authorisations from various government bureaucracies; contracts for public tenders; and procuring infrastructure construction services from mafia-certified suppliers.