https://www.corrieredellacalabria.i...ince-un-appalto-in-calabria-sei-arresti/Pisticci-Sant'Eufemia gas pipeline
'Ndrangheta, Friulian company blackmailed after winning a contract in Calabria: six arrests
Request from the Abbruzzese clan for a tunnel in Trebisacce. "They wanted 3% of the value of the contract in exchange for protection and the green light to work"
Published: 03/18/2025 – 8:14
A “tax” to have protection in Calabria: the bribe is worth 3% of the contract . This is what an important Friulian company, Icop of Basiliano (Udine), reports: «A bribe was requested to work in Calabria» states bluntly the engineering group that also operates outside the national borders. The news opens the Messaggero Veneto .
The Friulian company won a contract in Calabria – says the newspaper on newsstands today – and, blackmailed by the 'ndrangheta, reported everything to the police: in the last few hours six arrests have been made . The president of the company, Vittorio Petrucco, explained: «They wanted 3% of the value of the contract in exchange for protection and the green light to work» .
The story
""To avoid problems" we should have paid 3% of the value of the contract: 150 thousand euros that would have been obtained from the over-invoicing carried out by colluding companies, using false documentation relating to cement deliveries, landfill disposal and other oversized services". This is the request made to an Icop employee by the 'ndrangheta to the same company, which reported the fact to the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate of Trieste. The affair dates back to two years ago and ended with the arrest of six people for extortion aggravated by mafia methods and purposes . The case is reported with great prominence - in addition to the Friulian daily - also by other publications of the Nem group. The president of Icop, which deals with construction and special engineering works, Vittorio Petrucco, revealed it to the press in a long interview.
Icop had "a subcontract from Tre Colli spa with whom we have always collaborated and who was not involved in the facts, to build the variant to the Pisticci - Sant'Eufemia methane pipeline, fourth section, on behalf of Snam rete gas" .
It involved digging a micro tunnel in the municipality of Trebisacce, a five million euro contract as part of a much larger public work. The request was apparently sent by the Abbruzzese gang , according to the Messaggero Veneto . "From a work point of view, it was decided to go ahead, as if nothing had happened", explains Petrucco. For whom, in order not to be afraid in these cases "you must not think".
"We had already been both in Naples, in Piazza Municipio, and in Cefalù, in Sicily, for a large job for the Railways, and we had never had problems. Where there is serious control by the State, nothing happens". Will he take on other jobs in Calabria? "I really don't think so" .
The group
Icop, a subsoil engineering company and one of the main European operators in the field of special foundations and microtunneling.
It is a company of excellence, whose presence in Calabria would certainly raise the entrepreneurial level: the group is based in Basiliano and employed approximately 350 people at the end of 2023 with offices in 17 countries around the world.
In particular, the company has developed a strategic approach based on principles of environmental, social and governance (ESG) responsibility, implementing numerous concrete initiatives: for this reason it was awarded – last October – the prestigious Sustainability Award 2024, ranking first overall among the 260 companies of excellence awarded at Palazzo Mezzanotte, home of the Italian Stock Exchange. ( redazione@corrierecal.it )
