Naples, the slaves at the high-speed construction sites: "I need to put a dozen Taliban inside."

Shifts of up to twenty hours nonstop, no rest days, burning shacks in August, and starvation wages. At the heart of the scheme are "ARECO Srl" and the intermediary Ali Salah Ali Abdelati, known as "Salah," engaged in moving illicit capital to Egypt through invoices for non-existent transactions. Details of an investigation that is shaking up the country's major infrastructure projects emerge from the documents in the preliminary investigations judge Federica Girardi's order.

The slave factory in the TAV tunnels

Ten-, twelve-, fourteen-, sixteen-, and even twenty-hour shifts. Never a holiday, never a break. This is the grim portrait emerging from the documents of the investigation coordinated by the Naples Public Prosecutor's Office—with Deputy Prosecutor Henry John Woodcock—into the construction sites of the Naples-Bari high-speed and high-capacity rail lines. A sprawling system spanning the provinces of Naples, Avellino, and Benevento, passing through the base camps of the "NACA V" consortium in Afragola, the "HIRPINIA AV" consortium in Grottaminarda, and the "TELESE" consortium in Torrecuso.

At the heart of the scheme is “ARECO Srl,” a company formally based in Portico di Caserta and traceable to Dante Salzillo and Raffaele Salzillo, and the key role of an intermediary of Egyptian origin, Ali Salah Ali Abdelati, known as “Salah.”

According to the order signed by Naples investigating judge Federica Girardi, non-EU workers were recruited, employed, and exploited, taking advantage of their illegal status and desperate need. These workers often lacked residence permits, were unable to speak Italian, and lacked even the most basic training in workplace safety.

 The shocking wiretaps: "It's as if he had the prisoners"

The voices of the protagonists, captured by the Prosecutor's Office's wiretaps, convey the cruelty of the inhumane management of the workforce. In a conversation intercepted on October 11, 2024, Dante Salzillo discusses the system he has set up with Antimo Lugubre openly: Antimo Lugubre: "How much do you pay the Egyptians, 12 euros?"

Dante Salzillo: “With the gangmaster system… but that's gangmaster system, mind you!… Do you know that the Egyptians have gangmaster systems?… They work day and night, during the day in the tunnel and at night there… at night there they sleep 3 or 4 hours and then go out again… Now, for example, I have them in Grottaminarda, no, I have 34 of them in Grottaminarda… day and night until they run out… man, they're incredible… do we have to finish? Let's finish! 10, 12, 14, 16, 20 hours… they're guys who are always there, always working there, there's no such thing as a holiday, that is, because they have no home, that is, they sleep in the barracks even in the month of August…”

A system so extreme that it prompted the interlocutor himself to comment cynically: "It's as if they had prisoners... the families of the affiliates." And Salzillo's response clarifies the economic and logistical importance of that workforce for the company: "Well, how can you do the hard work without these people?"
Personnel management was alienating even from a contractual and human dignity perspective.

In another conversation recorded on January 7, 2026, Salzillo argues heatedly with intermediary Salah about the management of paychecks and real versus paper compensation:
Dante Salzillo: “Salah, listen, this person calling from Genoa, how are we supposed to solve this problem?… I give you the money, I give you the money… I don't care. Otherwise, I'll take the paycheck and pay it to people, otherwise I'll take the paycheck, put… euros and how much does it come out? Five hundred euros? I'll give them five hundred euros… I'm not interested in these people here, I don't want to have any dealings with them, otherwise I'll go and get the Italians myself, do you understand? I'll go and get the Italians myself.”

Dante Salzillo (in another phone call to Salah): "Salah, you don't have to come and get it from me. I gave you the money and you have to pay it to these guys... I gave you the difference in cash. Do you understand that I gave it to you in cash? If the paycheck comes out at a thousand euros and he's supposed to get a thousand and five, I gave you a thousand and five, okay?"

The picture is completed with conversations about housing logistics. On March 13, 2024, Dante Salzillo approached Ferdinando De Laurentiis about finding a property to use as a dormitory for non-EU workers, going so far as to disparagingly describe the future workers with the phrase, "I'll have to put a dozen Taliban in there."

From shacks to shopping malls: the €300 money laundering operation

The illicit profits generated by the exploitation of labor were not only used to boost construction site margins, but were also reinvested elsewhere. The prosecutor's investigation uncovered a complex scheme aimed at transferring approximately €300 to Egypt, money earmarked for the purchase of real estate and even a shopping center in Salah's name.

The extent of foreign investments clearly emerges from the wiretaps: “If I show you Salah’s villa in Egypt… Salah bought a shopping centre… Salah showed me the bank transfer he made… 300 thousand euros was his share… Salah even helps these people’s parents to live, because they send people to him…”.

To transfer the money abroad while evading security controls, between September 5 and 26, 2024, Dante Salzillo and the same intermediary contacted Domenico Di Lilla. Di Lilla identified a Marcianise-based paper company, "NJF Srls," willing to receive invoices for non-existent transactions in exchange for a 10% commission. The scheme involved issuing invoices for fictitious construction subcontracts by "GEOTEC WORK Srls" of Sesto San Giovanni, with deposit transfers directed to an account opened at the foreign payment institution "Qonto" (a brand of the French bank "Olinda Sas").

The criminal plan, however, was foiled by banking controls: on October 18, 2024, the payment institution unilaterally terminated the contract after finding anomalies and suspicious transactions, thus definitively blocking the flow of illicit capital abroad.

The shadow of the Camorra and the accusations of the Prosecutor's Office

The seriousness of the circumstantial evidence goes beyond the violations of labor laws and tax offenses. The indictment filed by the Naples Prosecutor's Office includes a serious mafia aggravating circumstance: all the alleged crimes—from aiding and abetting illegal immigration to aggravated labor exploitation, to complicity in false invoicing—were allegedly committed to benefit the Belforte clan.

Investigations are continuing to determine any further responsibilities along the subcontracting chain that characterizes one of Southern Italy's most important strategic infrastructures. This investigation sheds light on a system of widespread illegality, where the technologically advanced high-speed rails contrast dramatically with the squalid conditions, blackmail, and oppression experienced by invisible workers on the construction sites.