The Albanian prosecutor’s office issued 33 arrest warrants in the case of toxic waste

The Albanian prosecutor’s office on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for 33 people suspected of participating in the trade in toxic waste, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office said. TASR informs about it according to the report of the AFP agency.

In July 2024, waste was exported from Albania in more than 100 containers. Thailand refused to accept the shipment after claims by an environmental organization that it was illegal toxic waste. Subsequently, this shipment returned back to Albania.

The shipment contained toxic waste

A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office says that the operation of the security authorities is not yet finished and “follows the results of analyzes from a laboratory in Italy, which confirmed that the materials are toxic waste.”

Albanian customs documents indicated that the shipment contained iron oxide, which is a legal export commodity.

Suspicious package composition

Environmental organization Basel Action Network (BAN), citing a whistleblower, said the shipment in question contained electric arc furnace dust, a toxic byproduct of steel production.

Experts in Albania took samples from this shipment in October as part of an investigation into the trafficking of prohibited goods. The prosecutor’s office said at the time that, in cooperation with the European Anti-Fraud Office, it had begun an investigation into suspected smuggling and misuse of powers. They asked several institutions to make their laboratories and experts available to carry out the analyses. According to the spokeswoman of the prosecutor’s office, these samples were subsequently sent to a laboratory in Italy.

Global waste problems

Environmental NGOs say industrial waste is often exported from Western countries for processing in Asia and Africa in a global trade they estimate could be worth as much as $82 million a year.