Luca Casarini, head of the Italian migrant taxi NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans, defended receiving money from a Danish shipping corporation after his ship transferred migrants from a Danish vessel last year.
Casarini justified the payment and stated that is was a donation, as prosecutors in Italy have alleged the NGO negotiated a sum to profit from taking migrants from a vessel belonging to the Danish Maersk shipping company last year.
“Doing what states should do — that is, saving people — dealing with them, so they are not abandoned at sea, costs a lot,” Casarini told broadcaster Rete 4 during his appearance on the radio programme Quarta Repubblica, according to newspaper Il Giornale.
Neither Mediterranea Saving Humans nor Maersk has denied the €125,000 ($151,000/£108,000) payment was made to the NGO in late November. The Mare Jonio had transferred 27 migrants from the Danish company’s vessel on September 11th.
Both parties have claimed that the money was a donation made to cover the ship’s costs and its crew, who later took the migrants to Italy.
Italian prosecutors, meanwhile, have claimed both the NGO and Maersk had negotiated a cash payment and that the NGO had originally demanded as much as €275,000 ($331,000/£237,000).
“After this investigation,” Casarini said, “which will perhaps last years, it will prove that the intent was something else: to smear, block, prevent, control the freedom of people who go out to help at sea. In the end, we will see.”
The NGO head added that afterwards, he would file a defamation lawsuit and use the cash won from such a case to buy a “big, new ship”.
Despite Italy once again seeing more Wuhan coronavirus restrictions implemented by the government, migrants continue to enter the country across the Mediterranean Sea illegally.
Earlier this month, 39 migrants died trying to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa, with the Tunisian coastguard rescuing another 165 people from two shipwrecked vessels.
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