Organized crime turns Spain into a European garbage dump

Garbage is a million-dollar business. The collection, transportation and disposal of waste are regulated by european directives European regulations incorporated into Spanish legislation since 2000. The complex regulations mean that obtaining public waste management contracts requires a large business and logistics structure, which, in turn, implies a large investment. Getting rid of the remains of economic and domestic activity, especially those that are most polluting or harmful (wallites, construction materials, electrical appliances…), has been a fertile field for roguery, according to Civil Guard investigators. Recently, the armed institute has confirmed the actions of criminal organizations that transport tons of urban waste from other parts of Europe to Spain. Large mafias dedicated to fraudulently managing garbage for profit, as has traditionally happened in some areas of Italy, portrayed by Roberto Saviano in his book Gomorrah.

One of the keys to this business lies in the seals or codes that certify the characteristics of the waste and that allow garbage to cross borders without problems. The companies capable of putting some of these codes – which report what is contained, whether true or not, in the millions of trucks that cross Europe each year with all types of waste – have great power, little visible to society, which prefers living with one's back to the mountains of garbage it generates. Recent police operations have highlighted that criminal organizations take advantage of insufficient controls – and also, often, the ignorance of controllers – to sneak pressed tons of waste into Spain. When researchers have rummaged through this garbage they have discovered that, for the most part, it comes from Italy and the south of France.

The waste trade, regulated globally by the Basel Convention, is legal and is subject to a series of conditions to preserve the environment and health. However, if irregularities are committed, placing seals that do not correspond to the materials being transported or not subjecting those materials to the mandatory treatments (“valuations”) to get rid of them – which are the main forms of fraud, according to researchers – , can become a business as lucrative as it is dangerous.

The documentary Unsustainable, laugh the joke (“Unsustainable, after the garbage”, in Catalan), broadcast on TV3 in 2023, gives an idea of ​​the goings-on. It points out that waste management, in Catalonia alone, moves 10,000 million euros a year and employs 40,000 people, at the same time that it shows the exponential growth of garbage imports that enter through the port of Tarragona from Italy. According to their data, in 2022 460,000 tons of waste will already be imported from the transalpine country (400,000 more than in 2018). And to size the sector, the latest annual report on waste generation and management published by the Ministry of Ecological Transition – corresponding to 2020 – says that in Spain waste was collected in that year 22 million tons of urban waste. Financial studies indicate that the treatment of urban waste in Spain reaches business figures of 2,050 million euros. And in the case of the two million tons of “hazardous waste” that are estimated to be handled in Spain, it moved 1.5 billion euros in 2022, distributed among 150 companies that employed 4,000 workers.

The Nature Protection Service (Seprona) of the Civil Guard, with his latest operations, has uncovered that organized crime is specializing in illegal waste trafficking and turning Spain into Europe's garbage dump. Getting rid of a ton of urban waste costs 250 euros in France (50 euros of taxes included), and in Spain, 40 euros, six times less, according to sources from the armed institute. That is, a truck transporting 20 tons of waste in France would pay 5,000 euros to manage it; and in Spain, only 800. If to this wide profit margin is added the illicit treatment of garbage by some companies that ignore the regulations to save considerable costs, Spain becomes an ideal landfill in which everyone who participates they win.

Operation Poubelle

In the Operation Poubelle (garbage, in French), the last one developed by the UCOMA (Central Operational Unit for the Environment), all the roads led to the same landfill, the industrial waste landfill (RINZA) in Zaragoza. The Civil Guard investigators discovered that, by different routes, and with an average of 20 trucks per day, urban remains from regions in the south of France and Italy, mainly, were transported to the site. “Trucks passed through Irún, through La Jonquera, and made several stops at different companies in the sector, in Navarra, Catalonia and Aragon,” explains the commander of the unit, Carlos Astrain.

The agents lifted and analyzed the successive layers of burials in the landfill and studied the movement of trucks until they verified that remains were being deposited that did not correspond to those that the waste plant should receive, even though they entered with the authorized code. Investigators discovered that managers used “front companies” to “hinder the traceability of transported materials.” According to the in
vestigations, the trucks passed through the facilities of these companies, which changed “the seal” on these merchandise without carrying out the corresponding treatments or, simply, to falsify the contents of the truck.

The conclusion is that an organization made up of French and Spanish citizens would have obtained profits of 16 million euros since 2020 by bringing waste from France and illegally burying it in Zaragoza. There have been 22 people arrested in Spain for these events. Two of them, those responsible for the companies Ecovert (Ecology and Discharges Bajo Cinca) and Prewaste. France continues its own judicial investigation.

“Organized crime finds a rich source in fraudulent waste management, since the criminal charge has traditionally been an administrative infraction, a fine that, no matter how high it was, cost them a lot,” explains Commander Astrain of the UCOMA. “It is now that we are attacking this phenomenon as organized crime, that is, we go far beyond environmental crime, accusing those involved of criminal organization, money laundering, document falsification, etc.,” he adds.

UCOMA began observing several simultaneous phenomena a little over a year ago. When analyzing the movement of trucks across the Irun border, they determined that of the vehicles intercepted (randomly), “one in three transported illegal waste.” Already in July 2022 they had carried out the Operation Dechet, when they arrested nine people from a criminal organization dedicated to trafficking waste from France that ended up illegally deposited in Spain, specifically in Girona, Barcelona and Lleida. Among those involved were known members of organized crime in Marseille: “Some of them with multiple criminal records,” the investigators point out.

Environmental groups and affected neighbors have on many occasions denounced this trafficking of waste destined for Spain, such as in the Fraga and Monegros area of ​​Aragón or in the case of the Nerva hazardous waste landfill, in Huelva, located 700 meters away. meters from the town. But, theoretically, according to sources from the armed institute, the discharges assumed at that plant in Andalusia “had authorization from the Administration.” In Spain, the powers are transferred and it is each autonomous community that must ensure adequate treatment and disposal of waste.

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