This morning, on the delegation of the Prosecution of the Republic of Trani, the financiers of the Company of Molice, assisted by other staff of the Bari Group, with the help of the Aeronaval Operations Department of Bari, have been implementing, in the provinces of Bari and Barletta-Andria-Trani, to an application order of cautionary, personal and real measures, issued by the judge for preliminary investigations at the Trani Tribunal, that have been arranged against the legal representative of the company providing lapidated material for the work of "securing" the new commercial port of Molilium under house arrest, of the Chief Operating Officer of the office of the management of the works and an executive of the local authority responsible for the proceedings, for which the suspension from the exercise of public offices and services in conjunction with the temporary ban on the exercise of professional activity for the maximum time allowed by law has taken place. Under the order, moreover, it has been ordered against two companies (supplier and subcontractor of the lapidated material) and of the legal representative of one of them the seizure, functional to the confiscation, of the profit of the contested crimes, quantified overall in 250mila euros, performed on financial assets and availability. In addition, the Gip has ordered the seizure of companies and corporate shares of the two companies whose total assets have been estimated to be worth around 10 million euros.

The measure follows a complex and articulated judicial police investigation carried out by the Molber Company and launched in October 2021 through the execution of plovers, peddling, telephone intercepts, the installation of numerous cameras and the analysis of the copious documentation acquired at the construction site in February 2022. The investigation has revealed a proven system of fraud as part of the work of completing the pier of grieving to protect the harbour basin, consisting of the laying of multiple layers in blocks, natural or artificial. The required materials had to be chemically unalterable and mechanically resistant, compact and with a high specific weight, as desumible by the special procurement capitulate, and was planned to supply and pose in the works of approximately 106 tons of hollow material, of which about 60% consisting of venant tout necessary for the construction of the nucleus and the remaining 40% from massi in cliff. It has been established that, rather than providing the material provided for in the capitulate, it has also been used, including through the help of false transport documents, excavated material from excavations performed on private land, plant material as well as material of questionable provenance, including qualified material in the cautionary ordinance as a special refusal. The illicitly employed material would be about 40mila tons.