Climate crisis: 'Last Generation' probed for criminal conspiracy

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 15 - The Paduan members of the 'Ultima Generazione' (Last Generation) climate-crisis movement, responsible for leafleting and environmentalist-themed "provocations" on monuments in the city of Padua, are under investigation for criminal conspiracy, judicial sources said Saturday.
    The criminal hypothesis was formulated by the Digos speicla branch, which has been investigating since 2020, when the first search was carried out at the home of one of the promoters of the group, which in recent years has carried out roadblocks and defacements of private and historical buildings.
    The investigation prevented the spray-painting of the regional headquarters of the League in September 2022, at the height of the general-election campaign.
    The government earlier this week approved a crackdown on art eco-vandals after a string of attacks on cultural heritage sites across Italy by climate-crisis protesters.
    The cabinet approved a bill "in the area of the destruction, dispersal, deterioration, disfiguring, and defacing for illicit purposes of cultural and landscape heritage", sources said after the cabinet meeting.
    The bill, proposed by the Culture Ministry, envisages fines of 20-60,000 euros plus criminal sanctions for those who destroy cultural heritage and other administrative sanctions, of 10-40,000 euros, for those who deface monuments.
    Proceeds from the fines will be used by the culture ministry to clean and repair the monuments, the bill says.
    Earlier this month Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano said the government was considering making climate activists targeting monuments or works of art pay for the subsequent restorations, after members of the Ultimate Generazione (UG, Last Generation) group made the waters of one of Rome's most iconic fountains, the Barcaccia near the Spanish Steps, turn black.
    It was only the latest in a long series of acts of civil disobedience carried out by UG to highlight the need to address the climate crisis.
    "We are thinking of introducing a (new) administrative penalty," Sangiuliano said during a visit to Naples.
    "It is being studied by the technical and legal experts who work with the ministry, he added.
    The Rome fountain action was part of UG's 'Let's Not Pay For Fossil Fuels' campaign condemning public support and investment in the fossil fuels that are the driving force of the climate crisis.
    Last month UG sprayed orange paint over the walls of Palazzo Vecchio, the home of Florence's town hall, as part of the campaign.
    Florence Mayor Dario Nardella was hailed as a hero by some after he rugby-tackled one of the activists involved and even lent a hand with the clean-up operation.
    Other protests have included splashing paint over the front of the Senate in Rome, the La Scala opera house and the Vittorio Emanuele II statue in Milan and sticking themselves to Botticelli's Spring at the Uffizi and the Laocoon statue in the Vatican, as well as blocking the Mt Blanc Tunnel, throwing flour over an Andy Warhol car in Milan, and throwing soup onto a Van Gogh in Rome.
    UG is part of the A22 network of climate civil-disobedience groups active in several countries, such as Just Stop Oil in the UK, Stop Old Growth in Canada, France's Derniere Renovation and Declare Emergency in the United States. (ANSA).