The Lille Criminal Court on Tuesday January 30 sentenced nine men to sentences of up to five years in prison for extensive waste trafficking between Belgium and France, an unprecedented trial for a very lucrative type of trafficking.
The main protagonist of this traffic, which led to the illegal dumping of some 10,000 tonnes of Belgian waste in France between 2018 and 2021, Johnny Demeter was sentenced to five years of imprisonment and the revocation of two years of suspended sentence pronounced in 2016.
His lawyer, Quentin Lebas, considered this sentence
“heavy”
, although less than the six years required, and indicated that his client reserved the right to appeal.
Seven other men, including four from the Demeter family, were sentenced to sentences ranging from 18 months to three years, and the last defendant to confiscation of sums resulting from this trafficking.
In addition to a fine of 50,000 euros and a permanent ban from managing a waste company, Johnny Demeter is also ordered to rehabilitate the Rédange site (Moselle) where some 250 tonnes are still located, under penalty of 150 euros per month.
The system set up first consisted of bringing tonnes of Belgian garbage to French reprocessing centers, defrauded by the use of false company names and never paid.
Subsequently, trucks of garbage were dumped wildly in border areas of Lorraine.
Land was also rented in the north of France to dump waste there.
The trial was held before the Specialized Interregional Jurisdiction, a first in France in waste trafficking.
“Illiterate scammer”
The prosecutor stressed that this activity generates profits in the European Union equivalent to those of drug trafficking but poses a much lower criminal risk.
The court also ordered most of the defendants to pay, in total, hundreds of thousands of euros in damages to Suez, other defrauded companies, environmental protection associations and the commune of Rédange.
“The symbolism matters. The sums awarded, if we put them end to end, are astronomical
,” underlined the lawyer for associations and the commune of Rédange, Muriel Ruef.
“We have no illusions, we will not recover them but there is still a strong response from the court on this type of offense
,” she added, deploring however the vagueness which remains around the damage ecological, not sufficiently investigated according to her.
In his pleading, Johnny Demeter's lawyer regretted the absence at the trial of the Belgian waste giant Snoeys, which paid his client to collect the waste.
Describing Johnny Demeter as an
“illiterate crook”
, he assured that he had only taken advantage of loopholes in a less than virtuous sector.