According to Seznam Zpráv findings, the police closed one of the largest ecological-criminal cases in the Czech Republic. For a year, they investigated who and under what circumstances transported up to hundreds of thousands of tons of waste to the heap after coal mining in Ostrava.
Now, detectives have concluded that the case will end without charges. “The case is not a criminal act,” confirmed Soňa Štětínská, spokesperson for the Moravian-Silesian Police Directorate. According to criminologists, however, there may have been a violation of the Waste Act, and they handed the case over to the Czech Environmental Inspectorate.
List News was the first to open the entire case and map it in detail. At the end of last year, they exclusively described that a so-called separating air wall was to be created on the one-hundred-hectare heap of Heřmanice as a result of the authorities’ decision from 2013.
Excavated material containing coal has been burning underground for decades. And this gully with a length of hundreds of meters was supposed to cut the heap into two parts: So that the fire did not spread to the neighboring landfill of highly toxic sludge.
This was the task for the state enterprise Diamo, which manages the site.
Last year, however, an inspection by the Ministry of Industry and Trade revealed that the vast ditch was loaded with waste, among other things: remains of bricks, wood, plastics or cables. That is, a flammable material, dangerous for a poison dump.
Fatal failure, the inspection said
According to the conclusions of the ministerial inspection, there are 580,000 cubic meters of construction and other waste in the place where the ravine was supposed to be built. “There was a fatal failure of the inspected person (Diama),” reads the conclusions of the ministerial inspection.
The ministry fired the management of the Ostrava company and filed a criminal complaint against its former managers. And also indirectly to the Ostrava company Ridera Bohemia, which won a contract for the installation of a separating air wall years ago.
Photo: Michal Šula, Seznam Zpravy
The giant heap of Heřmanice is not a few kilometers from the center of Ostrava. For years, it has been burning and threatening a neighboring toxic materials dump.
The criminal complaint related not only to unauthorized disposal of waste. But also the suspicion that someone got significantly rich by taking waste to the Hermanica dump for years instead of to a paid landfill. According to estimates, it could have been at least hundreds of millions.
According to the spokeswoman Štětínská, the police worked with several expert opinions, studied the documents and interviewed the actors in the case. And finally, in mid-April, they handed the whole thing over to the Czech Environmental Inspectorate. With the fact that there may have been a violation of the Waste Act.
Company: We didn’t drive it
From the beginning, Ridera Bohemia denied that it was doing anything illegal at the Hermanic heap. “For several years, our involvement in the activities at the landfill has always been in accordance with our contractual obligations and under the supervision and control of both the contracting authority and public authorities,” stated board member Roman Rohel earlier.
At the same time, the company indicated that if there was unapproved waste on the dump, someone else could have brought it there. Ridera Bohemia also referred to expert reports that it had commissioned: According to them, only non-flammable material was introduced into the partition wall – exactly what Diamo required.
Tags: million case ends police charge hundreds thousands tons waste
