Organized Crime Could Jeopardize European Wind Industry

Europe’s booming wind energy industry has become a target of organized crime, according to U.S.-based corporate security group Kroll.

While stressing that the vast majority of European wind projects were legitimate, Jason Wright, senior director of Kroll, told reporters that groups linked to the Italian Mafia have infiltrated the industry to qualify for subsidies and to launder money obtained from illegal activities.

Over the past three years, Kroll has reported a sharp increase in the number of fraud and corruption cases associated with wind energy projects, primarily in Italy and Spain but also in Bulgaria, Romania and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe.

Wright said that about 50 percent of the renewable energy cases that the corporate investigations group handled in Madrid and Milan uncovered evidence of fraud or corruption, compared with an average of 10 to 20 percent for most types of Kroll projects.

The wind energy industry is vulnerable because projects frequently hinge on the political patronage of local officials who grant licenses and access to public land, Wright said.

However, Christian Kjaer, chief executive of the European Wind Energy Association in Brussels, rejected these concerns. He said that reports of corruption in Italy were symptomatic of deep-rooted problems in the country's construction sector and not restricted to renewable energy projects.