‘Top-tier criminals’ in Scottish waste sector

Scotland – Illegal activities within Scotland’s waste sector grossed over £27 million (US$ 45 million) last year, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has revealed. The scale of the problem is such that Interpol is now helping target these shady operations.

No less than 20% of all criminal gangs have ties to waste firms, according to SEPA. This illicit network includes some of Scotland′s ′top-tier criminals′, who use violence to secure waste disposal contracts, routinely cut corners and evade taxes. It may sound like something out of a movie but the threat to the industry is very real, SEPA underlines.

Stephen Freeland, policy executive at the Scottish Environment Services Association, explains the various types of operation: ′You′ve either got a fully-illegal landfill site; an illegal recycling operation; you′ve got a licensed site that is deliberately abusing its conditions for financial gain; you′ve also got a licensed site operating as a front for illegal activity; and you′ve got a fifth one with deliberate misclassification of materials to benefit from lower tax rates.′

The last of these involves mixing low-tax waste carrying a disposal cost of £2.50 a tonne with high-tax waste costing £80 a tonne in disposal terms, explains SEPA enforcement manager William Wilson.

Other countries, notably Italy, have well-entrenched problems with serious organised crime in the waste sector. Wilson notes: ′We as an agency are in touch with Interpol and Europol, and we are anxious to take part in initiatives that will look to learn from best practice and maybe the bitter experience of other countries and share that.′

For more information, visit: www.sepa.org.uk

Source: BBC