Italian Mobster comes clean on environmental damage

According to an ex Italian mobster an estimated 35 sunken ships containing large amounts of toxic waste have been illegally exposed of by the Italian mafia, claims Francesco Foti, now a criminal informant for the Italian government.

Foti confessed that the Italian Calabria Mafia has been sinking ships packed with the poisonous stuff in the Mediterranean Sea for the last 20 years. Foti says he sank three of the ships himself; the whereabouts of the other 32 are unknown.

According to CNN, Foti’s tip was confirmed when Italy’s environmental agency sailed to the alleged dump site 18 miles off the country’s southwest coast and found a ship about 1,600 feet below the ocean surface, flanked by yellow garbage drums marked “toxic.” Foti says the drums contain nuclear waste from Norway—due to increasingly strict waste disposal regulations by the European Union, it was cheaper to pay the mob to load the waste onto a ship and sink rather than dispose of legally.

Thirty-four other sunken ships are suspected to also contain nuclear waste as well as toxic medical supplies, according to World Health Organization.

So far, no one is speculating about whether the offshore toxic dumping is a significant threat to marine life–or to fish-eating humans–but let’s be realistic; nuclear waste dumping news is never good news.