Former Ilva plants, the gip of Potenza renews the seizure with right of use

The gip of Potenza, Ida De Iure, has given back to the former Ilva - now Acciaierie d'Italia in extraordinary administration - the faculty of use of the hot area plants of the Taranto steel plant, which nevertheless remain seized. The judge's order, more than practical value, because for the plant absolutely nothing changes from a productive and functional point of view - given that in the 12 years since the seizure, activity has never stopped thanks also to the various decree-laws that have recognised its strategic importance -, essentially has legal value. And now it should be the basis on which Ilva in extraordinary administration - owner of the plants leased to Acciaierie d'Italia - would make a request to the gip of Potenza to revoke the seizure. Because in the meantime, the company claims, the factory has changed, the property affected by the seizure (the Rivas) has been gone for several years, and the environmental plan has been substantially implemented. But that of the revocation is a card that Ilva in as will play in the near future, perhaps aiming to obtain it before the procedure for the sale of Acciaierie is concluded, the terms of which, at the end of last week, were extended on the authorisation of Mimit from 30 November 2024 to 10 January 2015 (in the running, for now, 15 groups, of which only three are interested in the entire group: Vulcan Steel from India, Baku Steel Company from Azerbaijan and Stelco from Canada).

A request for release as early as 2022

It must be said that Ilva in as early as 2022 had already requested the release of the plants, approaching the date, May 2022, by which the owner should have definitively ceded them to the tenant (at that time in Acciaierie there was a majority of the private ArcelorMittal). Ilva's request in as was, however, rejected by the Taranto Public Prosecutor's Office and the Taranto Court of Assizes (a few months earlier, in May 2021, there had been the first-degree verdict in the 'Ambiente Svenduto' trial on the crime of environmental disaster contested against Riva's Ilva) because the environmental plan, due to expire in August 2023, had not yet been completed and therefore for the magistrates the risks still existed.

Why the seizure was revised

Why the remodelling of the seizure? In September, a decision by the Taranto Court of Assizes of Appeal annulled the first instance sentence of May 2021. Therefore, the convictions were annulled - the Court had already ordered the suspension of the provisional measures by the defendants against the civil parties - and the confiscation of the plants, which would only become enforceable after the Court of Cassation, was also annulled. Even the seizure of the plants ordered in July 2012 without the right of use and then subsequently mitigated with the right of use, risked lapse if within a short time from the transmission of the acts to Potenza, the gip of Potenza had not reassumed it. Reassumption that the gip Iure did, but on the basis of what the then gip of Taranto, Patrizia Todisco, had established in 2012. In light of this, Ilva in as was then sent to Potenza a series of documents aimed at highlighting how in the meantime the situation of the factory in Taranto had substantially changed and investments for environmental improvement had been made. Documents that the gip examined in recent weeks, leading to the new order.