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Eternit owners sentenced to 16 years of prison

14 February, 2012In a trial in Turin Eternit owners, Stephan Schmidheiny and Baron Louis de Cartier de Marchienne, are found guilty in thousands of deaths and are sentenced to 16 years of jail. The case is unprecedented and can be exemplary for other producers and distributors of deadly asbestos worldwide.

ITALY: On February 13 the Italian court in Turin put a final dot in the case of Eternit Group. The owners and managers of the Group, Swiss billionaire Stephan Schmidheiny, 65 years, and Belgian Baron Louis de Cartier de Marchienne, 91 years, have been found guilty of ecological disaster entailing deaths of thousands of workers and members of the community of Casale Monferrato in province of Piemonte, Italy where a large enterprise of the Group was located. Multimillion fines are imposed on the defendants.

The court accepted the prosecutor's charges against asbestos magnates for wilful and deliberate environmental disaster by polluting and scattering the asbestos killer fibres and deliberate and wilful failure to implement precautions in the work place. More details are in earlier IMF report.

The prosecutors Raffaele Guariniello, Gianfranco Colace and Sara Panelli during 62 hearings since 2009 showed how the defendants, despite their clear understanding of asbestos deadly consequences for people and nature, chose to maintain operation of Eternit factories for the sake of profits. Relatives of almost three thousand dead and ill victims exposed to asbestos from 1952 until 1986 at Eternit Group enterprises, welcomed the guilty verdict with tears and applauses.

Pursuing a global ban on asbestos for many years in partnership with the global trade union movement including the Building Workers' International (http://www.bwint.org/default.asp?Index=3926&Language=EN), the IMF and ICEM welcome the decision of the court of Turin and hope it will serve as a clear warning for all producers, exporters and importers of the deadly substance to stop immediately all production and use of asbestos all over the world.