From The Washington Post:
Sting operations reveal Mafia involvement in renewable energy
PALERMO, Italy - Inside a midnight-blue BMW, a Sicilian entrepreneur delivered his pitch to the accused mafia boss. A new business was blowing into Italy that could spin wind and sunlight into gold, ensuring the future of the Earth as well as the Cosa Nostra: renewable energy.
"Uncle Vincenzo," implored the businessman, Angelo Salvatore, using a term of affection for the alleged head of Sicily's Gimbellina crime family, 79-year-old Vincenzo Funari. According to a transcript of their wiretapped conversation, Salvatore continued: "For the love of our sons, renewable energy is important. . . . It's a business we can live on."
And for quite a while, Italian prosecutors say, they did. In an unfolding plot that is part "The Sopranos," part "An Inconvenient Truth," authorities swept across Sicily last month in the latest wave of sting operations revealing years of deep infiltration into the renewable-energy sector by Italy's rapidly modernizing crime families.
The still-emerging links of the mafia to the once-booming wind and solar sector here are raising fresh questions about the use of government subsidies to fuel a shift toward cleaner energies, with critics claiming that huge state incentives created excessive profits for companies and a market bubble ripe for fraud. China-based Suntech, the world's largest solar panel maker, last month said it would need to restate more than two years of financial results because of allegedly fake capital put up to finance new plants in Italy. The discoveries here also follow "eco-corruption" cases in Spain, where a number of companies stand accused of illegally tapping state aid.
Because it receives more sun and wind than any other part of Italy, Sicily became one of Europe's most obvious hotbeds for renewable energies over the past decade. As the Italian government began offering billions of euros annually in subsidies for wind and solar development, the potential profitability of such projects also soared - a fact that did not go unnoticed by Sicily's infamous crime families.
All those tax dollars for subsidies. They would be stupid not too -- after all, why leave something this rich to the amateurs. Launder through a couple false fronts and a construction company or two. Easy picken's. No way is this sustainable in the long run -- poor economic model but get in early, extract the money and sell the facility to someone for such a deal...
