Five natural persons as well as six companies have been indicted, in particular for “export and irregular abandonment of waste in organized band”.
Le Monde with AFP
Recovery filled to the brim to the fire, illegal export of tons of garbage … Justice has struck organized waste crime in the South-East by carrying out eleven reports, said 12 Thursday 12 May the Marseille prosecution.
Tuesday and Wednesday, five natural persons were indicted “heads of management, transport, export and irregular abandonment of organized gang waste, organized gang scam and regulatory offenses”, detailed the prosecution in a communicated. Two of them were placed in pre -trial detention. Six companies have also been indicted as legal persons.
The five indictments must also answer for the irregular exploitation of a classified installation (recycling center) and destruction by fire, added the Marseille prosecutor’s office. Indeed the starting point of the survey, conducted by the Central Office to Combat Environmental and Public Health damage (OCLAESS), is the fire in August 2020 in a recycling center in Milhaud, in Le Gard, managed by Benne 30.
“The investigations concerning the origin of the fire but also the conditions for storage and treatment of waste with regard to the regulations (…) have made it possible to highlight several irregularities, in particular with regard to the stored volumes”, explained the prosecution. After the fire, and this despite the prefect’s formal notice to reduce the volume of its waste, the company “had continued its activity by receiving new waste”.
a “mafia system”
The operation, carried out as part of a judicial information opened at the end of 2021, was carried out in the Bouches-du-Rhône, the Gard and the Vaucluse, mobilizing more than sixty gendarmes and leading to eleven searches in total. According to the Marseille prosecution, more than 26,000 tonnes of waste was illegally exported between October 2020 and February 2021 by this company, especially in Spain, while certain waste “could have been the subject of wild burials”.
“Several storage sites, rented hangars who have become hangars filled with waste, operated to store waste there through several other companies, have been discovered in the Gard, the Bouches-du-Rhône, the Drôme And the Vaucluse “, describes the prosecution, speaking of” irregular conditions because of the volume and the nature of the waste “.
The investigation targets a recent fire, which had mobilized elected officials and activists at the beginning of the year: that of the Sorting Center of the Recyclage Concept 13 company in Saint-Chamas, near Marseille. This fire, which lasted more than a month, had caused air pollution worthy of that of Beijing, according to the Air Atmosud air quality organization, causing the anger of the inhabitants and elected officials.
In March, Richard Hardouin, president of France Nature Environnement in the Bouches-du-Rhône, had denounced a “mafia system”, ensuring that these companies “have no intention of respecting the law: that would break their economic model which is to buy low -cost waste and then bury it instead of sorting and enhancing it “.