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27 July 2010

Mediapolis: hypothesis of environmental destruction

The destruction of the territory is taking place even thanks to three sets of actors: the banks, the parties and the construction speculators. The parties give the concessions and create the infrastructure, the speculators rake in the money. In the case of Mediapolis, a commercial monstrosity that will destroy the morainal area at the foot of the Serra of Canavese, the banks are IntesaSanPaolo and Unicredit, the parties are both PDL and PDminusL and it doesn’t matter when they are alternating in the leadership of the Region of Piedmont and the entrepreneurs are almost unknown. A part of the ownership of the company Mediapolis is connected to a company in Luxembourg whose shareholders are not known, as is explained by the journalist Marco Preve, the author of the book called “La Colata” {outpouring). The area destined to be Mediapolis is owned by Olivetti, thus by Telecom Italia, that has not opposed it. Bernabè is from Trentino and he’s not interested.
The trick to “get the project to move forward” is always the same: “work, work, work”. The area of Canavese, that with Olivetti was in competition with the most famous names in the world in the field of computing, has been reduced to hoping for a shopping centre and in doing away with the most spectacular European amphitheatre related to a moraine.
If the Region of Piedmont has money to throw away on this crazy idea, let it rather use it to promote the small and medium sized enterprises in the field of technology. Let it think of the future of the young people and let it preserve Canavese. Meanwhile, up until the moment that they withdraw the financing from Mediapolis, I’m inviting the readers of the blog to close down their current accounts with Unicredit and IntesaSanPaolo. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

Interview with Marco Preve author of "La Colata"

What is Mediapolis?
- What is Mediapolis? First of all it’s 600,000 m² of green space, there behind me, in a zone that is absolutely still uncontaminated from an environmental viewpoint, above all it’s at the foot of the moraine called La Serra that is one of the places most well known in Italy for its natural beauty. What is Mediapolis? It was so many things, just recently it was to be a great theme park on communications, but then if you go and have a look at the project, if you go and read it, you realise that basically as well as a series of vague ideas about centres, laboratories that would have something to do with communications, then it’s not clear whether it is mass media or communications like the TV, or simply entertainment. Above all Mediapolis is a really a big shopping centre. The millions of visitors that the project owners and the people coming up with the ideas hope will come, will above all go to enrich a whole chain of shops. To cope with this avalanche, with this throng of possible and hoped-for visitors, the project has plans for a series of enormous infrastructure projects, motorway access roads, roads, flyovers, projects to hold back the water and even a heliport. To whom does Mediapolis belong? We have discovered that it is difficult to discover the real owners. In this case there’s the promoting company and it’s called Mediapolis Spa, and within that there are about 30 entities, some are individuals, private people who are owners of the areas of land who have sold, others are gentlemen, people of Ivrea who have decided to participate in the operation. And then unmissably we find three foreign companies, one of which is also called Mediapolis, but it is based in Luxembourg, another one, Brainspark, is based in London, and another is based in the Netherlands. As many of you will know, these are geographic locations that allow for tax benefits. And not just that but they make it possible for those who want to hide money maybe from those in Italy who want to know more. People who want to know who the real owners are. This is done by means of funds, shares, bonds, quotas and in fact right now it’s impossible to say who is behind these companies.

Postato da Beppe Grillo alle 08:18 PM in Ecology