Machinery recycling operation: 6 arrests and 17 under investigation, trafficking towards Saudi Arabia and Libya
The Highway Police of Emilia-Romagna has dismantled a transnational criminal organisation specialising in the theft and recycling of industrial vehicles. Six suspects under house arrest, 12 construction vehicles seized.
Operation Benna: international construction machinery recycling network dismantled
Seventeen people are involved in the investigation conducted by the Highway Police Department for Emilia-Romagna against a transnational criminal organisation specialising in the theft and recycling of industrial vehicles. According to poliziadistato.it, six of those under investigation are currently under house arrest.
The charges brought include embezzlement, theft, receiving stolen goods, recycling of industrial vehicles, and false documentation, material and ideological fraud.
The investigation, named "Benna" and launched in October 2025 by the Judicial Police Squad of the Department, made it possible to identify the criminal group, which acquired large quantities of construction machinery of illicit origin — including telescopic lifts, excavators and industrial machines — and then exported them abroad, particularly to Saudi Arabia and Libya.
The vehicles were transported through the port terminals of Ravenna and Civitavecchia. The total business turnover was estimated at over €1.8 million.
The recycling system made use of shell companies traceable to members of the group or to complicit individuals. During the investigation, 12 construction vehicles, two semi-trailers, two lorries and three automobiles were seized.
A key stage of the operation was the seizure, by the Judicial Police Squad of the Highway Police of Ravenna, of two industrial machines inside Ravenna port, before they were loaded onto a ship bound for Saudi Arabia. The vehicles had already been given new identities: false identification plates and forged export documentation.
The investigations also led to the discovery of a clandestine laboratory dedicated to vehicle counterfeiting and the production of false circulation documents, set up with the aim of hindering the identification of vehicles by law enforcement and facilitating their entry into foreign markets.
Source: Google News IT — Crime (it)