This case, which is pending at the Wuppertal district court, is said to stink particularly badly. When the public prosecutor’s office there investigated the suspicion that waste had been dumped illegally, the investigative authorities came across a pit with strange contents in an old air raid shelter: grayish-black water with a “strong putrid” smell. A water sample has increased amounts of PAK and PCB result. These are harmful substances.
That wasn’t the only suspected environmental crime that the public prosecutor’s office discovered, according to the Wuppertal district court. According to the court, the public prosecutor’s office accuses an entrepreneur from Solingen of illegal handling of waste. Presumed motive: greed. The accused operated an illegal landfill. And he even had material containing asbestos disposed of by workers who were not wearing protective suits or respirators, as the district court announced on request.
In the coming year, the indictment is to be heard again in court after a first trial had to be broken off due to the illness of the criminal defense lawyer. In the first trial, the entrepreneur commented on the allegations, but according to the court, made no confession; he had apparently denied the allegations. The public prosecutor’s office maintains the allegations and has already filed a second charge. The defense does not comment on this.
Hundreds of millions of tons of waste accumulate in Germany every year. What to do with it is strictly regulated, down to the smallest detail. Whether for waste oil, construction waste or packaging. But the German and European paragraphs are one thing, reality is often different. The Federal Environment Agency (UBA) mentions in its latest, which was published two months ago Report on environmental crimes more than 7000 cases per year in which waste is said to have been dumped illegally.
How garbage is moved is documented by numerous legal proceedings in Germany, not just the one in Wuppertal. In Güstrow in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a former granary was filled meters high with hazardous waste; Rubber, chemicals and more, a total of 28,000 tons. A decade ago, 30,000 tons of waste in a clay pit in Bochum was investigated, including polluted oil pellets. In Potsdam, the public prosecutor’s office has been investigating the suspicion that large quantities of waste were illegally transported to Poland. It should have been several truckloads a day. Entire ships from Germany ended up in Asia to be scrapped – investigations are also being carried out here.
A new special unit is to put a stop to criminal networks
The statistics of the UBA with more than 7000 cases per year range up to the year 2020. This magnitude has not changed since the middle of the last decade. According to the UBA, there used to be more than 8,000 cases a year. And these are just the events that “became known” to the authorities. So it shouldn’t be everything that ends up in uncontrolled rubbish dumps or in illegal landfills or is transported abroad via intricate routes; to the detriment of humans and nature.
According to the Ministry of Justice in North Rhine-Westphalia, “exorbitant profits” can be made with criminal garbage deals. The math is very simple: if you charge dearly for supposedly proper disposal, but simply dump construction waste, chemicals or plastic residue somewhere, your bank accounts will fill up much faster than with legal transactions.
NRW Minister of Justice Benjamin Limbach from the Greens wants to fight such machinations “with all vigor”. Limbach just got a nationwide one from the public prosecutor’s office in Dortmund Central office for the prosecution of environmental crime created. In this new Public Prosecutor’s Office specializing in serious environmental crimes, a dedicated team is to deal with “high-profile waste crime cases”.
In the new series “Die Müllionaire” the SZ explains the ways of waste – and who earns from it. Logo for series in business.
(Photo: SZ graphics)
The Dortmund special unit is intended to put a stop to national and international criminal networks and ensure that illegal profits do not end up in hidden accounts, but are consistently skimmed off by the state. The alleged perpetrators should be brought to justice as soon as possible. According to the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Justice, environmental crime should no longer be an “economic growth sector”.
The federal government and all federal states agree that a stop must be put to trash-smuggling. But how that should happen triggers a black-green argument again. Not in North Rhine-Westphalia, where the CDU governs with the Greens. The two partners have coalition agreement agreed to create a special public prosecutor’s office for environmental crime. This is happening now, but it is causing amazement in Bavaria.
The political demand for constantly new public prosecutor’s offices as a “panacea” for all crime phenomena is “unimaginative and inappropriate,” explains the Bavarian Ministry of Justice in Munich, headed by CSU politician Georg Eisenreich. The SZ had asked there whether there were public prosecutor’s offices like the one in Dortmund in Bavaria, which led to the violent reply.
Money laundering, corruption, fraud, many things come together
Eisenreich’s ministry asserts that “all forms of environmental crime are being consistently pursued” in the Free State. So far there have been no indications of criminal networks involved in environmental crimes in Bavaria. “There is currently no need to centralize the prosecution,” believes the Ministry of Justice in Munich. In the Free State, the “decentralized approach” with special departments in all public prosecutor’s offices has proven its worth in the fight against environmental crime.
Nevertheless, there are always indications of cross-border networks that enrich themselves from the garbage. In 42 cases, Greenpeace used hidden electronic tracking devices to track where plastic waste from Germany was disposed of. The waste ended up abroad 15 times. Five of these cases were “clearly problematic to clearly illegal,” says Jakob Kluchert from the Greenpeace research team.
The attraction of converting thousands upon thousands of tons of waste into millions of euros with illegal transactions must be great. As early as 2021, the European Union (EU) pointed out in a report that waste disposal was a “lucrative and rapidly developing industry” that increasingly attracted criminals. This often goes hand in hand with money laundering, corruption, fraud or tax evasion.
A shipyard in India where shipwrecks are dismantled. A dangerous job for the workers.
(Photo: Joerg Boethling / Imago Images)
Beaching is even worse than what is happening in Germany. What is meant are ships that are driven onto beaches and broken up there in a kind of slave labor under inhumane conditions. Such ship cemeteries in Southeast Asia are nothing other than large garbage dumps for steel giants from all over the world and an impertinence for people and the environment. The decommissioned sea transporters are pumped full of all sorts of toxic substances, ranging from heavy metals and asbestos to arsenic, chromium and mercury, which are often discharged into the sea.
For years, the German judiciary hesitated to take action against “beaching” because of illegal waste disposal. The proof is often difficult because the ships almost never sail directly from Europe to Southeast Asia. Instead they are sold before scrapping, get a different flag, make a few international stops and then end up in India or Bangladesh for scrapping.
Many fatalities in shipbreaking in Asia
This type of scrapping is a worthwhile business for shipowners from all over the world. Instead of paying for expensive recycling in the EU, for example, they collect money from local buyers. Three investigations are now underway in Kiel. An indictment has already been filed. For the first time, German shipowners are to answer before the district court of Rendsburg because of the “beaching”. A trial date has not yet been set.
In a single year, the “Shipbreaking Platform” organization, which denounces the inhumane “beaching,” found more than 90 ships in Southeast Asia from Germany alone. According to the organization, explosions, poisoning and accidents have claimed more than 1,000 lives during the past four decades in Bangladesh alone. The number of investigations in this country is comparatively modest. The other two proceedings in Kiel are directed against leading shipowners from Germany. In Hamburg, the public prosecutor’s office already searched a number of buildings in 2021 and 2022; at least ten cases are pending. But there are no charges yet.
In any case, the Hamburg public prosecutor’s office has a lot to do with the garbage that accumulates in and around the Hanseatic city. Last year, 95 cases against 132 suspects and 143 cases against unknown persons were pending for “unauthorized handling of waste”. This year there have already been 52 proceedings against 68 suspects and 84 against unknown persons. Elsewhere, too, for example in the small Saarland with an average of around 60 proceedings a year, public prosecutors often have to dig deep in the garbage. In Schleswig-Holstein there are almost 900 procedures per year on average.
However, it often takes years before the investigations are completed and the suspected environmental polluters are brought before a court. What particularly worries the justice ministries of the federal states are lenient sentences. In a May paper, the justice ministers complained that the punishment was severe enough for less than every 200th conviction. Illegal profits are not skimmed off consistently enough. It is doubtful whether the current legal situation allows “sufficiently effective and deterrent penalties”. Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) should examine tightening the law, the states are demanding.
Buschmann also intends to do that. On request, his ministry said that “severe penalties” for environmental crimes are planned as part of a new EU directive. For the many cases that are already pending before the judiciary, and in some cases for years, it is too late. This also applies to the case that takes place in Wuppertal, and in which it remains to be seen how the process will end. It is the presumption of innocence.
However, the public prosecutor’s office is sure of their case and wants to prove, among other things, that the accused presented forged evidence of the proper disposal of 7.4 tons of waste containing asbestos. In addition to criminal garbage deals, the entrepreneur is also accused of forging documents. As with other procedures, there are a number of accusations.
The SZ series “Die Müllionäre” explains the ways of waste – and who earns from it. You can find all posts here. The next episode will appear on August 23, a portrait of the “garbage king of Bremen”. Antony Peddy wants to bring waste separation to Ghana, the country where he was born.