An Italian appeals court today upheld a conviction for Swiss billionaire Stephan Schmidheiny for causing the death of 3,000 people in an asbestos case that campaigners say sets a key precedent for legal action around the world.
The court increased Stephan Schmidheiny's prison sentence in absentia to 18 years from 16 years when he was first convicted last year and ordered him to pay tens of millions of euros (dollars) to local authorities and victims' families.
Campaigners immediately hailed the verdict as an important landmark in the fight against asbestos, which is now banned by the European Union but is still widely used in the developing world.
Italy's National Asbestos Observatory said the sentence "encourages the battle of victims and relatives and honest people for a better world without asbestos and without a thirst for profit."
Bruno Pesce, head of the Association of Families of Asbestos Victims, who was present at the hearing, said the sentence was "a precedent".
Speaking to news channel Sky Tg 24, another campaigner Nicola Pondrano, said the company's management had been "not just irresponsible but really criminal because they did not give workers basic information like the fact that asbestos is cancerogenic."
Eternit had caused "a real massacre" in the towns in which it had plants, Pondrano said.
He said he hoped the billionaire would begin paying out compensation "starting tomorrow" and argued that the Italian state could begin contributing if this was not possible.
The tycoon is the former owner of Italian company Eternit, which made construction material using asbestos in the 1970s and 1980s, and he was taken to court by a group of former employees.
Referred to by Forbes magazine as the "Bill Gates of Switzerland" for his philanthropy, Schmidheiny was found by the appeals court to have caused "a permanent health and environment catastrophe".
Prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello said the verdict gave "everyone in Italy and the whole world the right to dream that justice can and must be done."
The case against Belgian baron Jean-Louis Marie Ghislain de Cartier de Marchienne, a major Eternit shareholder who was also being tried in absentia, was dropped because he died last month at the age of 92.
The town of Casale Monferrato, one of the worst hit by asbestos-related cases, was awarded 30.9 million euros in damages while the Piedmont region, where the largest Eternit factory was located, was awarded 20 million euros.
