Police, Environment Ministry raid recycling company suspected of fraud
In second recycling-related bust this month, investigation at Veridis alleges that company buried waste instead of turning it into compost and lied to government about it
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
The Environmental Protection Ministry and the Israel Police swooped in on a second company within a month on suspicion of irregularities relating to recycling.
On Sunday, the ministry announced that together with the police, it had raided the Veridis recycling company earlier this month.
Police said the raid took place on December 20, just a day after the owner of a major beverage importer was arrested for allegedly scamming the state out of hundreds of millions of shekels by claiming bottle collection and recycling that never took place.
Police on Sunday swept into the Veridis company’s Herzliya office in central Israel and its Tovlan and Masuah sites in the Jordan Valley, detaining several people for questioning, a statement said.
The suspected offenses relate to business licensing, fraud, and money laundering, police said, and additional individuals are slated to be questioned during the investigation.
The new probe has been conducted in parallel to an existing criminal investigation against Veridis which opened in February in connection with suspected environmental offenses, fraud, and money laundering.
In that case, Veridis is alleged to have taken ministry funds for recycling organic waste from the Hiriya site near Tel Aviv, which it was supposed to sell as fertilizer for agriculture. Instead, it is suspected of having buried that waste, while reporting that it sold the recycled material to farmers. During the probe, the police seized NIS 42 million ($11.7 million).
The new investigation has focused on allegations that Veridis buried waste from local authorities from the center of the country rather than turning it into compost, hiding information from the ministry and avoiding landfill fees.
Adam Teva V’Din, a not-for-profit organization that uses the law to advance environmental issues, has long claimed that the West Bank Masuah and Tovlan sites operate illegally and that the organic waste supposedly recycled there is useless for agriculture, as it contains fragments of glass and pieces of plastic.
Israelis are not required to separate organic materials from their trash. Rather, the Environmental Protection Ministry requires it to be scraped off from other non-recyclable materials before the latter are buried at landfill sites.
The ministry is in the process of establishing advanced anaerobic composting facilities that break organic matter down in machines that lack oxygen.
