Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

It is the result of an investigation into criminal conspiracy for theft, receiving stolen goods, illicit burning of vehicles and drug trafficking

Milan, June 5 2023 – The local police of Milan, in the early hours of today's morning, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office, executed 10 orders for the application of precautionary measures, issued by the Court of Milan against as many suspects. In particular, 7 people are subject to precautionary detention in prison, 3 to a residence ban in the Municipality of Milan. The provision, issued at the request of the Public Prosecutor's Office, arises from the extensive investigative activity coordinated by the Assistant Prosecutor Laura Pedio and the Deputy Prosecutor Andrea Fraioli which was developed through traditional investigations, technical activities, field checks and dynamic services on the territory.

The investigation activity originates from the discovery of numerous carcasses of abandoned cars along the final stretch of Via Bonfadini in Milan, from which parts such as engines, tyres, interiors and bodywork pieces of stolen vehicles had been removed.

The circumstantial gravity, achieved on a precautionary level through the detailed and complex investigative investigations, concerned the structure and operations of a criminal association dedicated to a large and heterogeneous range of criminal activities, including the theft of vehicles (cars and mopeds), their receiving and the illicit combustion of waste, consisting of parts dismantled from the same vehicles.

Furthermore, in the same space-time context, a second criminal association was also recognized as operational, this time aimed at drug trafficking, which would see as contacts three of the subjects currently under investigation, two of whom are also held responsible for one of the crimes, purpose of the first association.

The investigation activity has made it possible to obtain numerous elements that lead to the belief that there is a systematic activity of theft of vehicles and subsequent transport of the same to the nomad camp in via Bonfadini, their dismantling and subsequent use for multiple alternative purposes: the resale of the vehicle components on the market or the grafting of the same onto damaged vehicles of the same model in order to make them appear regularly repaired, or the replacement of the damaged vehicle with the stolen one, after replacing the license plate.

To all this it must be added that the waste resulting from this activity - including internal and external components of the vehicles and other plastic and polystyrene materials - appears to have been set on fire on several occasions, with the consequent integration of the hypothesis of the crime of illicit combustion of waste referred to in art. 256-bis Legislative Decree. 152/2006.

Finally, the same video footage used by the local police also revealed, in the same context, an activity of dealing in narcotic substances such as cocaine and hashish, also committed in an organized manner.