Asbestos, mockery for the victims: the fund will also compensate the guilty

The fund for asbestos victims? It also compensates companies

“The fund is for the protection of asbestos victims, but the company that caused those deaths and professional illnesses will also collect the money”. Il Fatto Quodiano wrote this today, regarding an inter-ministerial decree, “signed on 5 December”, which according to Il Fatto “gives businesses up to 20 million euros, the overall budget”.

This is, according to the newspaper directed by Marco Travaglio, “a rule which, in addition to being inexplicable on a legal level, is causing the anger of the associations that follow families who have lost their loved ones to Asbes-related diseases. A case more unique than rare in the legal system: the State returns to a company guilty of asbestos deaths part of the compensation that it has had to pay following unsuccessful sentences, or conciliations”.

What does the decree say? “Public companies declared unsuccessful with an executive sentence by 31 December 2023 can access the Fund.”; these lawsuits must have “the object of compensation for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages recognized in favor of the workers”. To obtain the sums “they must attach, under penalty of inadmissibility, the receipt of payment of compensation for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage established in the executive sentence or in the judicial conciliation report”.

The confederal secretary of the CGIL Francesca Re David complains: “The law – explains the union leader – seems to establish a fund for the settlement of compensation in favor of workers and their heirs who have fallen ill after exposure to asbestos at work in publicly owned shipbuilding companies, but extends it to the same companies guilty of such exposure. It's a real joke.”

“In fact, the compensation is transformed into a share of compensation already paid in an executive (or conciliatory) sentence, and a refund is established in favor of Fincantieriperfectly solvent and world leader in its sector, whose managers – King David finally recalls – were criminally and civilly convicted for having caused the illness and death of many workers due to the improper use of asbestos”.

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