How Italy is Demonizing Swiss Asbestos Entrepreneur Stephan Schmidheiny Die Bahn is growing

The last verdict against Schmidheiny was more than two weeks ago: a Novara jury sentenced the Swiss entrepreneur and philanthropist to 12 years in prison for negligently killing about 150 former workers and residents of the former Eternit factory in the small Piedmont town of Casale Monferrato . .

The prosecutor had demanded life in prison for intentional manslaughter. Although his application was not entirely successful, the prosecutor was pleased with the verdict: “At last a judge has given a name to the tragedy of Casale Monferrato. Now we know that the defendant we brought to justice is responsible.” Schmidheiny’s lawyers have announced they will appeal the verdict.

The Novara trial is the latest in a seemingly endless series of proceedings that the Italian judiciary has brought against the 75-year-old businessman over the past twenty years. The avalanche began in 2001, when the Turin public prosecutor launched an investigation into the asbestos-related deaths of Eternit workers at the Casale Monferrato factory.

The factory, which mainly produced asbestos cement, was owned by the Swiss Eternit Group from 1973 to 1986 under the leadership of Stephan Schmidheiny. In the proceedings, in which the entrepreneur was charged with the deaths of more than 2,000 people, he was initially sentenced to 18 years in prison for causing an environmental disaster and on appeal for intentional manslaughter; he was later acquitted by the Italian Supreme Court due to statute of limitations.

But the stream of lawsuits continued, contrary to the principle that also applies in Italy that no one should be tried a second time for a crime that has already been convicted. The number of pending proceedings even increased because the Eternit Group also had shares in Eternit factories in other Italian locations, such as in Naples.

The reasoning of the Italian judiciary is always the same: Schmidheiny knew the dangers of processing asbestos fibres, but did not close the factories for profit, thereby consciously accepting the deaths of countless workers and residents. As the owner or majority shareholder of Eternit SpA’s Italian factories, he bears sole responsibility for the tragedy.

Keep following even after 50 years

The lawsuits against the former owner of the Swiss Eternit Group are actually about endless suffering: in Casale Monferrato alone with its 32,000 inhabitants, where the largest of the four Italian Eternit factories was located, more than 3,000 people have died from the consequences processing asbestos.

And although the factory has been closed for almost forty years, about 50 people still die every year in the small town from pleural tumours, lung cancer or asbestosis. The fact that so many people still die from asbestos is due to the long latency period: there can be forty to fifty years between inhaling asbestos dust and becoming ill.

What the Italian media and judiciary regularly withhold in their demonization of Schmidheiny – a judge in Turin compared the Swiss entrepreneur to Adolf Hitler and the business meetings of the Eternit Group to the Wannsee conference – Schmidheiny was one of the first entrepreneurs in the world to emerge from asbestos processing has been phased out. Previously, he had invested tens of millions of euros in protective measures in his holding company’s Eternit factories and switched to wet processing of the dangerous fibre, which drastically reduced the risk of disease.

Because the Italian competing factories did not do the same, Eternit SpA was soon unable to produce competitively and went bankrupt in 1986. At the time, the Italian trade unions had protested against the closure of the Eternit factories – today they participate as private prosecutors in the trials against Schmidheiny.

The Italian state does the same – and it does not look good: Italy, among others, had asbestos processed on a large scale at its state shipyards long after the closure of the Eternit factories.

In 1990, the European Court of Justice ruled that Italy was not doing enough to address the threat of asbestos; The fiber was not banned until 1992, six years after the end of Eternit Italia’s “Swiss period”. Asbestos was banned in Switzerland in 1989, Austria in 1990, Germany in 1993 and the EU as a whole in 2005.

Ten million dead

Of all occupational diseases, asbestos is by far the biggest cause of death: according to the UN labor organization ILO, about 100,000 people die every year. In Germany there are 1,500 victims every year, in Switzerland and Austria 130 to 150. The ILO expects a total of 10 million deaths worldwide by 2050 – and there are still countries that extract and process asbestos, especially China.

Italy is the only country in the EU that, almost thirty years after the asbestos ban, is still trying to ‘work through’ the criminal justice drama. Most states have taken a different path.

In Switzerland, Germany, Austria and many other countries, asbestos diseases are recognized as occupational diseases and entitle people to an appropriate pension. In addition, in some countries it is possible to claim damages under civil law. Schmidheiny also paid tens of millions of euros in compensation to more than 1,600 Italian victims – on a voluntary basis. However, many Italian asbestos victims have refused these payments because they wanted to act as co-plaintiffs in the criminal case. (aargauerzeitung.ch)