Trieste: stop to Italian illegal speculations against the international Free Port

analysis by Paolo G. Parovel

On December 19th, 2016, the International Provisional Representative of the Free Territory of Trieste – I.P.R. F.T.T. has started the legal actions to prevent the provisional Italian administration of the Free Territory of Trieste from eliminating, illegally and starting on December 31st, the main area for the strategic development of the international Free Port of Trieste destining it to housing speculation, in breach of the rights and interests of all States and of their enterprises.

The strategic value of the International Free Port

The threatened Free Port area consists of 65 hectares of land, storehouses, and railways, its property value is between EUR 1.5 and 3 billions. However, its functional and strategic value is much higher, because the development of the Free Territory of Trieste as international Free Port and as financial center is essential for the economic-political stabilisation of South-Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of Yugoslavia (LINK).

The present-day Free Territory of Trieste and its International Free Port are established by virtue of the Treaty of Peace with Italy of 10 February 1947 under the protection of the United Nations, which in 1992 have defined also its borders with Slovenia. Since 1954-55, the military defence of the Free Territory is entrusted to the NATO, while its temporary civil administration is entrusted to the Italian Government. The I.P.R. F.T.T. acts as its international representative since 2015 (LINK).

The abuses of the administering provisional Government

The Italian Government abuses of the provisional trusteeship mandate to impair the strategic reactivation of the Free Territory and attempts sabotaging the International Free Port with two main operations: eliminating its Northern Free Port with a massive housing and building speculation (LINK) and paralyzing its Southern Free Port with a LNG terminal (LINK, in Italian).

Both operations of the administering Italian Government constitute breaches of international law as well as of the Italian laws that ratify and enforce the Treaty of Peace of 10 February 1947, which establishes the international Free Port as State corporation of the Free Territory of Trieste and rules it be used by all States and enterprises under the control of an international Commission and under the protection of the United Nations.

The illegal speculative housing operation

The illegal speculative building operation against the Northern Free Port is an outright fraud organized by Italian politicians and speculators by a long series of illicit actions in order to deactivate that sector of the Free Port and making it seem that it can be no longer used, with the scandalous support of Italian magistrates who ignored our journalistic investigations, and dismissed without investigations our documented criminal complaints (LINK, in Italian).

This judiciary protection allowed the fraud to continue up to its present phase, which consists in assigning the area to the Municipality of Trieste as an available asset, and entrusting it to sell that to private subjects, paying the proceeds to the Italian Port Authority.

Since the Municipality cannot afford the remediation or the maintenance necessary to sell the land and the buildings at fair prices, the technical assessment of the spendings is going to justify the quick underselling of those assets to private speculators who, given our information, are already getting ready for it since time.

The operation, which is also under serious, still unanswered, anti-mafia questions (LINK, in Italian), does therefore have all characteristics of a massive fraud at the expenses of productive public properties, which is a characteristic crime in the corrupted Italian political-institutional system.

The difference is that, this time, the the fraud is beyond Italian borders, and constitutes an attempt to breach international rights but also international economic and strategic interests over the Free Port of the Free Territory of Trieste and against its role in the stabilization of South-Eastern Europe, especially in the area of former Yugoslavia.

The false statement of the local judiciary bodies

Right now, the whole operation is based on the attempt to force the illegal registration of 65 hectares of land, storehouses, and railways as available properties of the Municipality of Trieste, however, those assets are established by law as properties of the International Free Port of the Free Territory of Trieste and are subject to rights and to constraints that favor all States and their enterprises.

It is for this purpose that, in February 2016, the local bodies entrusted with the Italian administration opened a procedure requesting the Municipality of Trieste be registered in the Land Registry Book as the new owner of those assets, skipping the verification of the actual ownership and of the existence international constraints. The I.P.R. F.T.T. did therefore officially act as opposing party in the proceeding, and requested it be notified to all States entitled with rights over the International Free Port (LINK).

However, the Italian political and speculative pressing is such that the judiciary bodies in charge omitted the notification to those States and, nine months later, on November 22nd, 2016, have attributed the ownership of those 65 hectares of land, storehouses and railways (which actually belong to International Free Port) to the Municipality, issuing two decrees in which they do falsely claim that no third party is entitles with rights over those assets (LINK to the original Italian document and to the English translation).

The false declaration of the Italian judiciary bodies has the purpose of simulating that the Municipality of Trieste has an immediate right to dispose of and to sell those assets to private speculators. The deceit is therefore direct also to possible purchasers in good faith.

Additionally to that, the deceptive judicial decision was written in a way that it illegally assigns the area to the Municipality of  Trieste as early as on December 31st, 2016, making it impossible blocking the enforcement of both decrees with legal disputes.

The registration of international constraints

The International Provisional Representative of the Free Territory of Trieste – I.P.R. F.T.T. has therefore reacted with an official request to register immediately on the Land Registry Book the international constraints established over the assets that the two decrees assign to the Municipality, for those are established with the Treaty of Peace and by the very Italian laws (LINK).

Since December 19th, the request of the I.P.R. F.T.T. is officially registered within the Land Registry Book, and it has three main effects: it prevents the public officers entrusted of the Italian administration to pretend they are unaware of the international constraints, and it prevents the Municipality from selling those assets as its own, also, it allows the I.P.R. F.T.T., all other subjects entitled with rights over the Free Port, and all international guarantors to activate the legal procedures for the Italian illegal decrees be deemed null and void.

The States harmed and international guarantors

The subjects entitled with the rights threatened by the fraud of the Italian administration are all the States and commercial or financial companies, as users of the International Free Port del Free Territory of Trieste, and the States entitled with the right to control it: Free Territory, United States, United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Russia and other successor States of the USSR, Slovenia, Croatia, and other successor States of Yugoslavia.

The international guarantors of the rights that were violated by the Italian administering authorities are the United Nations Security Council, pursuant to Resolution S/RES/16 (1947) and to article 21 of the Treaty of Peace with Italy, and the Governments of the United States and of the United Kingdom, which, as primary holders of the mandate of temporary civil administration over the present-day Free Territory of Trieste, have sub-delegated its civil administration to the Italian government.

The sub-administering Italian Government has therefore the immediate legal duty to fight corruption in the Free Territory, and to prevent abuses against the International Free Port.

© 30 Dicembre 2016