Eleven people, including an entrepreneur who once called herself the “trash queen,” have gone on trial in Sweden for illegally dumping toxic waste in the country’s biggest environmental crime case.
The closely watched trial at Atunda District Court in Solntuna, near Stockholm, focuses on recycling company Think Pink, its former chief executive Anne Bella Nilsson, which has since changed its name, and her ex-husband Thomas Nilsson.
Prosecutors have accused the company of dumping waste in 21 locations in Sweden in a way that could harm human health and the environment. All defendants deny any wrongdoing.
The case has been ongoing for several years and the trial is expected to last nine months. Nielsen and his employees were indicted in December.
Neilson was the last defendant to appear in court on Tuesday. Wearing large dark sunglasses, he refused to answer questions as he pushed reporters’ microphones away.
The Nielsons face charges of serious environmental crimes and serious economic crimes related to the company, all of which they deny. Others face a combination of different charges, including serious environmental crimes, serious economic crimes related to the company, aiding and abetting serious environmental crimes, and environmental crimes.
From 2018-2020, the company’s heyday, Think Pink’s trademark pink construction bags, offering cheap recycling and waste disposal, were a common sight in the capital. Nilsson received awards for his work as an executive director.
The business collapsed in 2020 with the arrest of its owners. The company has been accused of dumping at least 200,000 tonnes of waste around Sweden.
Police investigators, whose report runs to 50,000 pages, found harmful levels of arsenic, dioxin, zinc, lead, copper and petroleum products. Several trash cans caught fire, one of which lasted for months.
Anders Gustafsson, one of the three prosecutors on the trial, described the case as “Sweden’s biggest environmental crime in terms of scope and organization.”
He said on Tuesday that Think Pink had dumped garbage and used fake documents to deceive officials and make huge profits. There are claims for damages of 260 million kroner [£19m]Mainly from municipalities, he told broadcaster SVT, when they had to clear huge mountains of rubbish. “This is an exception that is on a large scale and has been going on for a long time in several parts of the country.”
Senior prosecutor Linda Schoen said the investigation showed how ordinary people turn a blind eye to such crimes. Don’t you think about this when you pay a small fee for these services? Can what you put in a construction bag be recycled at this cost? “It’s like giving up on who and where makes our cheap clothes,” he told the daily Dagens Nyheter.
According to the indictment, which covers locations in 15 different municipalities, the main suspects are involved in transporting thousands of tons of unsorted construction and demolition waste, buried, wrapped in plastic in bales and used as fill material.
Nilsson, who has changed her name to Fariba Vankor, previously told Swedish media that the company acted in accordance with the law and that she was the victim of a conspiracy by business rivals. “He has an explanation for all of this,” his lawyer, Ian Tibling, told the Dagens Knight newspaper on Monday.
AFP contributed to this report