E-waste firm indicted over exports
Electronic waste firm Executive Recycling Inc., its owner and a former executive were indicted by a federal grand last week in Denver.
Executive Recycling; Brandon Richter, the owner and chief executive officer; and Tor Olson, former vice president of operations, were indicted on charges of wire and mail fraud, environmental crimes in connection with the failure to file a notification to export hazardous waste, exportation contrary to law, and destruction, alteration or falsification of records.
According to the indictment, Executive Recycling was an electronic waste recycling business located in Englewood, Colo., with affiliated locations in Utah and Nebraska. The company collected e-waste from private households, businesses and government entities.
The Justice Department said a significant portion of e-waste collected by the defendants were cathode ray tubes such as those found in televisions and computer monitors and contain lead. It said the company exported e-waste, including CRTs, to foreign countries, including the People’s Republic of China.
Executive Recycling appeared as the exporter of record in more than 300 exports from the United States from 2005 to 2008, and the government said about 160 of the exported cargo containers contained a total of more than 100,000 CRTs.
The government said from February 2005 to January 2009, the defendants “knowingly devised and intended to devise a scheme to defraud various business and government entities who wanted to dispose of their e-waste, and to obtain these business and government entities’ money by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses.”
The government said the defendants falsely represented that they would dispose of e-waste in an environmentally friendly manner in the United States, but repeatedly exported used cathode ray tubes to China.
The group Basel Action Network, which opposes trade in toxic materials said the government first became aware of the alleged violations after its investigation, became the subject of a CBS’s 60 Minutes news magazine episode.
In 2007 and 2008, BAN said its volunteers photographed 21 seagoing containers at Executive Recycling’s loading docks that they subsequently tracked across the world, with most ending up in China.
“This is a major victory for global environmental justice,” said BAN Executive Director Jim Puckett. “Even before we have a U.S. law in place to explicitly prohibit this dumping on developing countries, the U.S. government’s criminal justice system has recognized the massive toxic trade we first discovered in 2001 as fraudulent, as smuggling, and as an environmental crime.”
Basel Action Network said legislation has been proposed in both the U.S. House and Senate to prohibit the export of toxic electronic waste to developing countries and that such an export prohibition already exists in Europe.
“Sadly, Executive Recycling is just the tip of the e-waste iceberg,” Puckett said. “They are but one of hundreds of fake recyclers who sell greenness and responsibility but in fact practice global dumping.”
E-waste firm indicted over exports
