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아래 내용은 석면시멘트 소유주들을 대상으로 형사소송과 민사소송이 진행중인 사건의 "Turin trial and verdict" 요약본입니다. 이탈리아 튜린 법원이 담당하고 있으며 1심에서 16년의 징역형이 판결났습니다.
일부 중요한 내용을 발췌해서 번역을 하였습니다.
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역사적으로 중요한 평결
Stephan Schmidheiny(65)는 스위스와 벨기에 산업그룹인 Eternit(에터니트)의 소유주이자, 1976년~1986년간 에터니트 이탈리아 지부의 대주주였다. 벨기에인인 Baron Jean-Louis de Cartier de Marchienne(90)은 에터니트 이탈리아의 이사이자 소액주주였다. 하지만 오늘, 그들은 튜린의 이탈리아 법정에서 징역 16년형을 받았다. 그 평결은 대법원에서 최종판결이 있을 때까지 유효하진 않다. 그들은 항소를 할 것이고 그 기간은 수년이상 오래 소요될테고 에터니트는 최종선고까지 재판거부와 연기 등의 방법을 충분히 활용할 것이기 때문이다. 검사인 Guariniello는 그들에 대해 20년의 징역형을 구형했고 그 근거로 건강과 환경에서의 지속되는 재앙과 작업장에서의 안전기준을 의도적으로 무시한 것으로 했다. Guariniello는 유럽뿐만 아니라 세계에서 제일가는 검사이기에 이런 중요하고도 대단한 기소를 할 수 있는 것이다. 오늘, 이 엄청난 규모는 이천명 이상의 석면피해자와 60개 이상의 환자 모임회 대표들이 4개의 법정을 꽉 채울 정도로 모였다는 것을 간접적으로 보여준다.
3,000여명의 이탈리아인들을 죽음으로 이끈 책임
1999년의 최초 조사 이후로 검찰청은 Schmidheiny와 De Cartier가 에터니트 이탈리아의 운영에 책임이 있다고 결론 내렸다. 공식적인 재판은 2009년 12월부터 시작되었고 그 동안 피소된 두명은 한번도 나타나지 않고 변호사가 대신 응했다. 검사의 목적은 개인의 책임과 태만에 의한 과실, 석면의 유해성에 대한 빠른 인식 등이지만 피고인들은 책임회피를 그 목적으로 하고 있다. (이하 부분 생략) 피고들은 종업원과 가족들, 에터니티 이탈리아 인근 4개 지역의 주민들을 포함하여 대략 삼천명의 죽음에 책임을 지고 있고 육천명 이상의 소송자들에게 수백만유로를 지급해야만 한다. (이하 생략)
피해
법원은 Casale Monferatto 자치당국에 25백만 유로(1유로=천오백원)의 보상금 지급을 판결내렸는데 그 자치지역은 석면광산이 있던 곳으로 개방된 열차화물칸에 실려 마을에서 석면공장으로 운송되었다. 에턴니티의 또 다른 지역인 Cavagnolo에는 4백만달러가, Piemonte 지역에는 이천만 유로가 인근지역 및 도로 청소로 지급되었다. 피고들은 역시 7만~10만유로 정도를 8개의 연합이 각각 지급해야 하고 피해자와 가족들은 유럽 기준을 따라 각각 3만~3만 오천 유로범위안에서 보상받을 자격이 있다. 사실상 충분치 않지만 전부 합쳐진 누적금액은 95백만유로에 달한다. (이하 생략)
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Turin: the largest asbestos trial ever
Monday 13th, February 2012. The Eternit trial and verdict: the essence.
by Y.R.K. Waterman, Sc.D. LL.M.
A verdict of historic importance
Stephan Schmidheiny (65) used to be the owner of the Swiss-Belgian industrial group Eternit (ETEX), which was in turn a major shareholder of the Italian subsidiary of Eternit between 1976 and 1986. The Belgian Baron Jean-Louis de Cartier de Marchienne (90) was a director and minority shareholder of Eternit Italy. Today, they were both sentenced to 16 years prison by an Italian court in Turin. The verdicts are not effective until final, meaning the defendants have the right to go to a Court of Appeal and to the Supreme Court before they must undergo their verdicts. This could take many years and is, I suspect, the most likely outcome to happen, considering Eternit’s usual game of denial and delay.
The public prosecutor, Mr. Guariniello, had demanded twenty years in jail for both men, for ‘causing a continuing disaster in health and environment’ and for wilfully neglecting safety regulations in the workplace. He is to be admired for being the first public prosecutor in Europe, perhaps even in the world, to undertake such an important prosecution – and of such breath-taking scale. Even today, this massive scale was reflected in the attendance of over two thousand asbestos victims and representatives of reputedly more than sixty asbestos victims associations – all packed together like sardines in four court rooms of the enormous Palace of Justice.
Responsible for the death of 3,000 Italians; and counting
After an initial investigation that began in 1999, the Public Prosecutor’s Office concluded that Schmidheiny and De Cartier were responsible for the management of Eternit Italy. The trial began officially by December 2009; during the countless court sessions, the two accused have never appeared in person even once. They have always been represented by their lawyers – at my last count in Turin, no less than 24 for them both. While the public prosecutors’ aim was to prove personal responsibility, criminal negligence and early knowledge of the health dangers of asbestos, the defendants main defence was to deny being in a responsible position. One of their lawyers even made a last stand today, likening the criminal proceedings to Nazi Germany and considering that the criminal legislation applied was conceived or comparable to ‘destroy the enemy and which justifies Guantanamo’.
The baron and the billionaire are held responsible for the death of approx. 3,000 people in Italy, including employees, their family members and persons in the vicinity of the four locations of Eternit Italy. They will have to pay millions of euros in damages to the claimants – over 6,000 – who joined the criminal trial as civil parties. The claimants include victims and their heirs, local governments, trade unions and insurers amongst many.
It must not be forgotten that the toll of 3,000 victims is nowhere near finished, but will continue for many decades to come, owing to the wide distribution of asbestos by the defendants.
Damages
The Criminal Division of the Court awarded 25 million euros to the municipality of Casale Monferatto, where asbestos was mined in the local mountains and transported by open rail lorries through the town to the local asbestos factory. The municipality of Cavagnolo, another Eternit site, was awarded 4 million euros, while the region of Piemonte was awarded 20 million euros for the clean-up of the roads and countryside. Inail, an insurance firm specialising in occupational liability, was awarded 15 million euros.
The defendants are also sentenced to paying 70,000 to 100,000 euros to each of eight associations, including several trade unions and the WWF. The victims and their families are entitled to compensations ranging between 30,000 and 35,000 euros – for European standards, that is not particularly much, but cumulatively still amounting to a massive 95 million euros just for them.
International importance
Much of the trial’s success must be attributed to the persistent efforts of Mr. Guariniello, who invested over a decade of his life into this trial. Still, an important factor has also been the unprecedented way in which asbestos specialists – notably Barry Castleman – and asbestos lawyers from all over the world shared crucial evidence with the prosecutor, thereby enabling him to bring Eternit inescapably to justice. Working together in this fashion has done much to make the international asbestos community closer and stronger. Sharing evidence has had another beneficial effect: it will allow asbestos victims worldwide to gain access to evidence that was previously unknown or unavailable to them, strengthening their civil cases against Eternit in the dozens of countries where it is located.
Also, public prosecutors in other countries may study the Turin trial as a precedent for bringing their own criminal trials against directors of national Eternit subsidiaries. In Belgium, for instance, Eric Jonckheere recently won a civil case against the Eternit factory in Kapelle-op-den-Bos, which is widely contaminated with asbestos waste from the Eternit factory. In his court case, much evidence came to light which, in combination with the Turin evidence, should spur Belgian public prosecutors into action: to make the Belgian directors responsible for their criminal neglect of public and environmental health and to make Eternit Belgium pay for the enormous costs of cleaning the countryside of its waste material. Health insurers and local municipalities should also not have to look far for incentive to join such trials as civil parties.
In The Netherlands, much the same could apply to the directors of the Eternit factory in (formerly named) Goor, where the roads, ditches, farm yards and nature are also contaminated with asbestos waste from the Eternit factory. It is well documented how the Eternit factory actively encouraged locals to collect asbestos waste material for private purposes, knowing all the while of its health dangers but neglecting to inform them of this. The necessary environmental clean-up will take decades at huge costs borne by the taxpayer – this state of affairs can hardly be justified if criminal negligence can be proven. For if anything, Eternit (ETEX) is hardly short of funds.
Nearly every country in the world has its Casale Monferrato, its Kapelle-op-den-Bos and its Goor – and the occupational, home exposure and environmental victims that go with it. Now it’s time for more Guariniello’s to stand up – and be assisted by the global asbestos victims’ community.
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