Nine people were arrested in three departments in the south of France by the gendarmes on Monday for suspicion of waste trafficking. Five of them were subsequently indicted for various offenses mainly relating to environmental damage, learned 20 minutes with the Marseille public prosecutor’s office.
Carried out in Gard, Vaucluse and Bouches-du-Rhône, this operation was initiated following an investigation opened following a fire that occurred on the night of August 13 to 14, 2020 in Milhaud, in Gard, on the site of a platform for the transit, sorting, grouping and preparation of non-hazardous waste. This company, despite a formal notice, had continued its activities. Several of these wastes seem “to have been exported to Spain, under conditions that do not comply with the regulations, (…). More than 26,000 tonnes of waste would have been exported between October 2020 and February 2021, ”continues Dominique Laurens, public prosecutor of Marseille, the jurisdiction which carried out the investigation.
Serial fires
The investigators also discovered “several storage sites, rented hangars that have become hangars filled with waste, operated to store waste there through several other companies” in Gard, Bouches-du-Rhône, Drôme and the Vaucluse. Among these sites, two were the subject of a fire in the Bouches-du-Rhône, in Meyrargues and Saint-Chamas, last December. A fire which had generated significant pollution and which had taken more than a month to be extinguished. Five people were indicted and two of them imprisoned. Six legal persons have also been indicted.