Two years after the outbreak of the Italian garbage scandal, the Tunisian judiciary has decided the fate of the accused. On Wednesday, former Environment Minister Mustapha Aroui was sentenced to three years in prison by the Trial Chamber of the Tunis Court of First Instance. Three other people were also sentenced to three years in prison. The owner of the Tunisian company responsible for importing Italian waste – a fugitive – has been sentenced in absentia to fifteen years in prison, and a senior environmental ministry official has been sentenced to ten years. Former Environment Minister Chokri Belhassen, who was also a suspect, was acquitted.
In response to the pronouncement of the verdict, MP Majdi Karbai published a status on his Facebook page on Thursday, January 5, 2023, reminding that 1,900 tons of Italian waste were still on Tunisian soil. Citing a May 2021 report by Bernardo Lovene, broadcast on Italian channel Rai 3, the politician added that the former Tunisian ambassador to Rome had failed to reach local authorities in the Campania region of southern Italy to negotiate the return of waste to its source.
The deputy did not fail to attack the Tunisian judiciary, which considered its decision insufficient given the seriousness of the case. “Today in Tunisia you can bring garbage and toxins into the country, the state spends billions to return them and you only get three years in prison, while for a ‘post’ criticizing the president, the head of government or a minister, the punishment is up to five years in prison,” he wrote, referring to the infamous Decree 54.
Let’s get back to the facts. On November 2, 2020, El-Hiwar broadcast an episode of Hamza Belloumi’s program The Four Truths. In this episode, the journalists uncover a human trafficking network whose mission is to rid Italy of the garbage cans that are causing the country to collapse and struggle to develop. On that day, the public learned that in 2019 almost 120,000 tons of waste and recyclable materials had to be transported to Tunisia in containers every year. An Italian company specializing in waste recycling (Sviluppo Risorse Ambientali) based in Salerno agreed this with the owner of a Tunisian plastic waste recycling company (Soreplast), who was to receive 48 euros per tonne treated.
The contract was signed, 282 containers left the port of the Italian city for the coastal city of Sousse in Tunisia with on board 7,800 tons of hazardous waste according to the classification of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.
When customs authorities discover the containers’ capacity, an unprecedented environmental scandal erupts, bringing to light a widespread case of corruption. According to the papers, the Tunisian company had to recycle industrial waste, especially plastics, to complete the recycling process in Tunisia. In reality, however, it is mixed waste and sanitary material that arrived in the containers.
Seven people were arrested after the fall, including a former environment minister who was sacked after the scandal, and senior officials from Tunisia’s customs and the National Waste Management Agency (Anged). Eleven other suspects are being investigated, including the Tunisian consul in Naples.
In May 2020, the journey of Italian waste to Tunisia began, although the import and export of household waste is prohibited under the provisions of Tunisian law and international conventions, in particular the Bamako Convention, to which Tunisia is a signatory. and which, since 1998, has banned the import of hazardous and radioactive waste into Africa from non-parties. The last load docked in Sousse in July 2020.
Bringing the 7,800 tons of waste back to Italy legally is not an easy task. In the past two years, the Tunisian government has only managed to send back three quarters of the garbage shipped to Sousse after a trip to the Mediterranean arranged by a ton of forged papers and a few petty national minds. However, the Italian Council of State had ruled on this issue by ordering the Italian exporting company to bring back its waste within a maximum period of 90 days from December 9, 2020. Only 213 of the 282 containers discovered have been returned since February 2021.
It should be remembered that the Italian company Sviluppo Risorse Ambientali appealed against the Campania Region’s decision before being summoned by the Italian Council of State and thus partially complied by returning part of the containers. According to the Italian press, the waste trade is not the first scandal the company has been involved in. Sviluppo Risorse Ambientali was founded in 2008 and was the focus of a 2016 judicial investigation conducted by Salerno’s Directorate of Anti-Mafia Investigations. The owner Tommaso Palmieri is accused of running an organization that recycles bulky waste. The company is also mentioned in an Italian Parliament report on the link between the waste industry and organized crime.
If the Italian company still hasn’t recycled the rest of its waste, it’s because it would have evaporated. The 1,900 tons disappeared from the M’saken warehouse where they were stored. According to a statement by Majdi Karbai in August 2022, the garbage was buried in Tunisia.
Nadya Jennen