Charges Dropped Against Scientists in Lecce Xylella Case

The case to estab­lish respon­si­bil­ity for the spread­ing of Xylella fas­tidiosa in Salento, Italy has been dis­missed.

Prosecutors in Lecce filed charges against 10 indi­vid­u­als back in December 2015, accus­ing them of the spread­ing of a plant dis­ease, will­ful vio­la­tion of the pro­vi­sions on the envi­ron­ment, the com­mit­ting of fake mate­ri­als by offi­cials in pub­lic doc­u­ments, fraud­u­lent mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion and the destruc­tion or dis­fig­ure­ment of nat­ural beauty.

However, inves­ti­ga­tors now say that it is not pos­si­ble to demon­strate the causal link between the spread of Xylella and the actions of the 10 sus­pects.

The judge for pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion, Alcide Maritati, granted the motion for dis­missal filed by the pros­e­cu­tors Elsa Valeria Mignone and Roberta Licci and issued a 44-page decree.

Based on the cur­rent sci­en­tific knowl­edge on Xylella, the inves­ti­ga­tors were forced to fol­low the test of cau­sa­tion adopted by the Italian courts in the cases of med­ical respon­si­bil­ity: to move for­ward with charges, it is nec­es­sary to con­clude with a very high degree of prob­a­bil­ity that the event could have been pre­vented by fol­low­ing the pro­ce­dures adopted by Italian law.

Prosecutors in the case were unable to prove that if the indi­vid­u­als had fol­lowed all the cor­rect pro­to­cols, the dis­ease would not have spread any­way.

“It is impos­si­ble to prove that unlaw­ful con­duct led the spread of the bac­terium,” the pros­e­cu­tors wrote in their motion for dis­missal.

Nevertheless, after a step-by-step descrip­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tions car­ried out with the help of the Carabinieri’s forestry and agri-food unit, the pros­e­cu­tors empha­sized in their con­clu­sions that they did find ​“irreg­u­lar­ity, care­less­ness, and mis­con­duct” on the part of those who were under inves­ti­ga­tion.

Prosecutors said that there were delays in offi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions sent to the author­i­ties regard­ing both the des­ic­ca­tion of Salento’s olive trees and the dis­cov­ery of the symp­toms of Xylella in the ter­ri­tory. Acts of neg­li­gence regard­ing the sam­pling of test mate­r­ial and the mis­man­age­ment of the exper­i­men­tal fields were also reported.

The decree also con­tains con­fi­den­tial con­ver­sa­tions obtained from emails that were found on seized com­put­ers belong­ing to the sus­pects.

In these emails, inves­ti­ga­tors found evi­dence of the ​“pre­pon­der­ance of eco­nomic inter­est, that is to say the prospect of obtain­ing fund­ing for the exclu­sive ben­e­fit of the University of Bari, over the sci­en­tific research pur­pose.”

This ulte­rior motive would have ​“clearly influ­enced the approach of the sus­pects to the issue at an early stage, even at the expense of the trans­parency of sci­en­tific research,” Maritati, the judge, wrote.

He also noted that ​“atten­tion was paid to the impacts [of the dis­ease’s spread], in terms of the sci­en­tific rep­u­ta­tion [of those involved] and to the eco­nomic prospects in rela­tion to the man­age­ment of the phe­nom­e­non, which was then man­aged in sub­stan­tial monop­oly by the University of Bari and the lab­o­ra­to­ries asso­ci­ated with it.”

Lastly, the report reveals that the phe­nom­e­non of the rapid des­ic­ca­tion of olive trees in Salento dates back to the mid-2000s. However, a num­ber of sit­u­a­tions occurred in the fol­low­ing years, which led the pros­e­cu­tors to con­firm that ​“ret­i­cence, omis­sions and deceit have affected the out­come of the inves­ti­ga­tion.”

Meanwhile, mea­sures to stem the spread of the out­break that were taken after­wards proved to be ​“delayed, dis­jointed, and not in accord with a proper emer­gency man­age­ment.”

The part of the pro­ceed­ing relat­ing to charges of irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the man­age­ment of pub­lic funds, fal­si­fi­ca­tion of doc­u­ments, and fraud­u­lent state­ments brought by the sus­pects, and the orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sented by them, was trans­ferred to the prosecutor’s office of Bari.

In par­tic­u­lar, pros­e­cu­tors there will exam­ine the com­mu­ni­ca­tions made by the regional phy­tosan­i­tary obser­va­tory in October 2013, which offi­cially rec­og­nized the onset of Xylella in Italy for the first time, as well as doc­u­ments acquired at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari.

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