Europe’s booming wind energy industry is being exploited by criminals who see the opportunity to tap into billions of euros’ worth of European Union subsidies, according to Kroll, the corporate investigations and security group.
Organised groups linked to the Italian Mafia are among those to have infiltrated the industry, Jason Wright, senior director of Kroll’s consulting group, told The Times.
While emphasising that the overwhelming majority of European wind projects were “entirely legitimate”, he said that criminals were increasingly investing in the industry, both to qualify for subsidies and to launder profits from drug-running and other illegal activities.
Kroll, he added, was doing brisk business conducting due diligence on renewable energy projects on behalf of big banks and other potential investors.
The American-owned Kroll has detected a sharp increase since 2007 in the number of cases involving fraud and corruption in the wind energy sector — chiefly in Italy and Spain but also in Bulgaria, Romania and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe.
“Renewable energy is completely dependent on subsidies, so it is clearly an area for corruption,” Mr Wright said. “Wind farms are a profitable way to make money because of the subsidies, and they are also a great way of laundering it.”
He added that the wind energy industry was vulnerable because projects frequently hinged on the political patronage of local officials who grant licences and access to public land. With more than €6 billion (£5 billion) of EU subsidies having been earmarked for renewable energy projects over a 13-year period ending in 2013, Mr Wright said that the industry’s growth in Italy had been much faster in Sicily and the south of the country than in the north — a reflection of the ease with which developers can secure licences.
Eight people in the Trapani area of western Sicily, as well as in Salerno in the southwest of the mainland, were arrested last year after an investigation by anti-Mafia magistrates into a string of wind projects.
Police in Trapani said that officials had been given bribes and luxury cars to encourage the town to invest in wind farms worth hundreds of millions of euros.
In another case, in Spain’s Canary Islands, five local officials, a mayor and two developers were accused of bribery and misappropriation of land. Another case in Corsica involved the skimming of more than €1.5 million worth of EU subsidies for wind energy projects.
