The Environmental Crime Prevention Program (ECPP) was an organization which tracked dumped

nuclear waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. It is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear ...

, including

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

nuclear missiles Nuclear weapons delivery is the technology and systems used to place a nuclear weapon at the position of detonation, on or near its target. All nine nuclear states have developed some form of medium- to long-range delivery system for their nuc ...

left over from the

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. It was founded by Italian lawyer and security consultant

Mario Scaramella Mario Scaramella (born 23 April 1970) is a lawyer and security consultant. He came to international prominence in 2006 in connection with the poisoning of the ex-Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Alexander Litvinenko. As responsible for intel ...

along with his partner Filippo Marino in

Naples, Italy Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...

in 1997. Describing itself as a "permanent intergovernmental conference" focusing on

environmental crime Environmental crime is an illegal act which directly harms the environment. These illegal activities involve the environment, wildlife, biodiversity, and natural resources. International bodies such as, G7, Interpol, European Union, United Na ...

with rotating presidencies by such countries as

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and

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, Sri Lanka and Slovakia, Romania and the US, its true purpose remains difficult to discern, and recently the ECPP has attracted the attention of Italian investigative authorities, who consider it to be a probable intelligence front organization.

Mission and purpose

The website of Environmental Security International quotes Scaramella as describing the mission of the ECPP as "providing environmental protection and security through technology on a global basis, particularly for

developing nation A developing country is a sovereign state with a less-developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to developed countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreeme ...

s. ECPP has offices at the Fucino Space Center in Italy, the largest civilian space center in the world. ECPP has used

aerial surveillance Surveillance aircraft are aircraft used for surveillance. They are primarily operated by military forces and government agencies in roles including intelligence gathering, maritime patrol, battlefield and airspace surveillance, observation (e.g ...

and the

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an physical object, object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring inform ...

capabilities of

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s to detect environmental crimes in Eastern ( in particoular Russia ) and Southern Europe and eco-terrorism in Central Africa and South America."

Stealth conferences

Among the mysteries of the ECPP was a supposed "IV Plenary Conference" held at the

United States Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it began operation on De ...

's offices in New York, which Scaramella used to register for intergovernmental status. The ECPP's IV Plenary Conference reportedly lasted for all of one hour.Claudio Gatti
How one man insinuated himself into poisoning case
''International Herald Tribune'' January 9, 2007 The ECPP didn't even hold a First Plenary Conference, as Scaramella thought it more credible to directly pass to the Second Conference in order to succeed in fund-raising. The "IV Plenary Conference" was then used by Scaramella to give credit to his shell organisation when he went to see other official organisations.

References

Front organizations Environmental organisations based in Italy {{crime-stub