Tunisian minister arrested over Italy waste scandal

ROME: Tunisian Environment Minister Mustapha Laroui has been arrested in connection with a scandal involving the shipment of hundreds of containers full of mislabeled household and hospital waste from Italy to Tunisia.
Senior officials of the ministry, Tunisian Customs and the Waste Management Agency were also arrested in the same case. The suspects will be questioned by prosecutors in Sousse.
According to Italian news agency ANSA, the containers were declared by the Tunisian company importing them to contain scrap plastic left over from manufacturing processes, which the firm said it would recycle.
However, those containers were discovered to be holding tons of household and hospital refuse, the import of which is banned by Tunisia, raising speculation that they form part of an illicit trade in waste products.
An investigative source in the Italian Finance Police told Arab news that the Italian firm sending waste to Tunisia is based “in the outskirts of Naples,” in southern Italy, but did not disclose its name.
The same source confirmed that an investigation on the case is “under progress” also on the Italian side, in order to “uncover local links here.”
Italy exports thousands of tons of waste abroad every year as it is unable to dispose of all that it produces. Much of the waste is normally sent to northern Europe.
“But for some years we have had news of waste sent to North Africa, often with the complicity of criminal organizations such as the mafia and the Camorra,” former National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor Franco Roberti told Arab News.
According to Tunisian radio station Shems FM, Laroui was arrested on Dec. 20 after he became a suspect in the affair.
The spokesman for the court of first instance in the town of Sousse, Jaber Ghnimi, told Shems FM that the minister had initially been a witness in the case of illegal importation of waste from Italy but that evidence indicated he was involved in the scandal and that he was later arrested at his home.
ANSA explained that Laroui’s ministry and the customs authority were “confirmed” as having played a role in the scandal in mid-December by Badreddine Gamoudi, the head of the parliamentary commission on administrative reform, good governance and the fight against corruption, as privately owned Business News reported at the time.
Laroui’s dismissal was announced in an official statement by the office of Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi.
The statement gave no further detail on the reasons for the decision, official Tunisian news agency TAP reported on Sunday.
However, the same news agency noted the connection with the waste import scandal, highlighting that an investigative report by privately owned Elhiwar Ettounsi TV on Nov. 2 had “revealed to the public this import scandal by a company based in Sousse.”
Some 70 containers imported by the company have been confiscated, while the remaining 212 containers remain at Sousse Port, TAP said.
Minister of Equipment, Housing and Infrastructure Kamel Eddoukh has been tasked with Laroui’s portfolio on an interim basis.