Legal setbacks are piling up for Stéphane Bonifay.
Already indicted and placed in pre-trial detention in August for “destruction of property belonging to others by fire in an organized gang” – he is suspected of having ordered the fires of seven vehicles of the Pizzorn group in March 2023 – the vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) of Var has just been referred to the Draguignan Criminal Court indicated this Friday noon in a press release by prosecutor Pierre Couttenier.
The entrepreneur is accused of various violations of the environmental code as well as crimes of forgery, use of forgery and aggravated laundering of the proceeds of these crimes at the time when he was the ODG of Ecorecept, a company specializing in sorting and recovery of professional waste (Ecorecept was placed in liquidation on July 6, 2023).
“Violation of all waste disposal rules”
Following several checks by the Regional Directorate for the Environment, Planning and Housing (Dreal) during 2023, an investigation was opened by the economic, financial and environment division of the Draguignan public prosecutor's office for “waste trafficking “.
“The investigations entrusted to the Brignoles research brigade, now completed, made it possible to highlight that the company Ecorecept, headed by Stéphane Bonifay, had won several public waste treatment contracts, notably for the Toulouse metropolis and the the Brignoles agglomeration, offering very low pricesspecifies Pierre Couttenier. Such highly competitive practices were made possible by the violation of all waste disposal rules.”
More than 2 million criminal assets seized
Among these, investigators noted a “lack of treatment for recycling, and dangerous storage of waste due to saturation of the La Garde and Six-Fours treatment sites”but also illegal transfers to Spain of hundreds of tons of waste and the burial of “thousands” tonnes of waste in the Saint-Baillon quarry, in the town of Flassans-sur-Issole, “including inert waste”.
The profits from these various offenses and the environmental damage are estimated by the prosecution at 10 million euros. “The investigation also led to the seizure of criminal assets worth 2.5 million euros, including real estate and boats,” adds Pierre Couttenier.
As the Ecorecept company is now placed in compulsory liquidation, the costs of operations to bring the processing sites up to standard will be borne by another company.
Stéphane Bonifay will have to answer for these offenses before the Draguignan criminal court on April 1, 2025.
