Italy: Italy's top court has overturned an 18 year jail sentence for a Swiss billionaire who was convicted over his role in the country's biggest asbestos scandal. According to the court, too much time had passed since the alleged wrongdoing.
Stephan Schmidheiny was found guilty in 2012 of negligence at his company's Italian factories in the 1970s and 1980s, which eventually led to almost 3000 asbestos-related deaths. However Italy's highest court annulled the verdict on 19 Wednesday 2014, saying the statute of limitations had kicked in. The decision means that Schmidheiny will also escape having to pay millions of Euros in fines and compensation ordered by Italian courts in 2012 and 2013.
Prosecutors in the original trial said that Schmidheiny had not taken sufficient measures to protect the health of workers and nearby residents from the asbestos used at the Italian plants of his building material firm Eternit. The factories had used asbestos in the production of cement. The plants closed in 1986, but workers and local residents continue to suffer the consequences, with Italy's biggest union saying that the latest victim of an asbestos-related disease was only buried on 15 November 2014.
Prime minister Matteo Renzi said the ruling underscored the need to reform Italy's notoriously snail-paced judicial system. "We need to ensure that trials take less time and change the statute of limitations," said Renzi.
