The profits from the offenses and the environmental damage are estimated at 10 million euros.
A Var waste processing company was recently caught by the courts for a series of offenses causing considerable environmental damage, the Draguignan public prosecutor, Pierre Couttenier, said in a press release on Friday morning.
During 2023, the Regional Directorate for the Environment, Planning and Housing (DREAL) will carry out several checks on the activity sites of the company Ecorecept, located in Flassans-sur-Issole (around fifty kilometers from Saint -Tropez) allowing facts of illegal waste management to be brought to light. An investigation is then opened by the Draguignan public prosecutor's office and followed by its economic, financial and environmental division.
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Unfair competition
Entrusted to the Brignoles research brigade, the investigations revealed that the company, managed by Stéphane B., won several waste treatment contracts, notably for the Toulon Metropolis and the Brignoles conurbation, by offering very low prices. Very competitive practices “made possible by the violation of all the rules for handling waste”explains prosecutor Couttenier. In this case, the absence of treatment for recycling and hazardous storage of waste due to the saturation of the La Garde and Six Fours treatment sites; the illegal transfer to Spain of hundreds of tons of waste, reported by local authorities; the burial of thousands of tonnes of waste in the Saint Baillon quarry, including inert waste.
At the end of the investigations, Ecorecept was placed in liquidation and the processing sites taken over by another company, “who had to bear the costs of the operations to bring them up to standard”further details the magistrate. And to add that “the gains from the offenses and the environmental damage are estimated at 10 million euros”. The investigation also allowed investigators to seize criminal assets worth 2.5 million euros (real estate, boats and bank accounts).
Stéphane B. and his companies are now being prosecuted for violations of the environmental code concerning the rules for transferring waste abroad and irregular waste management. Summoned before the Draguignan criminal court on 1is April 2025, they will also have to answer for charges of “forgery and use of forgery” and “aggravated laundering” of the proceeds of these crimes.
