Europol to investigate toxic tar residues that paved road to wrongdoing

A Spanish investigation into the illegal transport of toxic residues, in which a former Popular Party (PP) deputy has been targeted for influence-peddling and bribery, is now under the European Union's radar screen. Europol has said it will investigate the origin of the contaminated residues that Galician businessman Fermín Duarte imported from the Netherlands and sold to construction companies in the northwestern region.

Javier Escribano, who stepped down from his post as a PP deputy in the Galician parliament earlier this month, was named as a co-defendant in the case when investigators discovered through tapped phone conservations that he had received a Porsche from Duarte.

The toxic residues that Duarte reportedly sold through public contracts in at least eight Galician municipalities contained substances that are prohibited in the European Union, such as crude coal tar, which harms the environment and is a cancer-causing agent. An investigating judge in Ferrol has ordered a team from the national police's UDEF economic crimes brigade to find out through Europol where the suspicious cargoes of asphalt residue that entered the town's port from 2009-2011 came from. There are some 400,000 tons of asphalt lying in the port that no one has claimed.

Duarte, who is the owner of Manmer SL, denied before the investigating judge that the cargo belongs to him and blamed the Alicante construction company, Holding Transmediterránea, for importing the shipments.

One of the angles Europol will grapple with is whether the Betum Recycling Centrale, where the asphalt was originally purchased, sold a product that needed to be recycled without purifying it first in an oven. "It is a very expensive process but it is required under Dutch law," said a source at the Galician Aggregates Association (AGA).

The AGA was the first to file complaints against Duarte, which eventually led to the undercover investigation known as Operation Sand. Environmental prosecutors dropped the case after determining that Duarte had not committed any crime, but prohibited him from selling certain types of materials and ordered him to conduct an analysis every time he mixed them with potentially harmful substances.

When Duarte ignored the order, the AGA filed another complaint in 2010. The residues - basically material taken from old roads in northern Europe - were shipped to Ferrol from Rotterdam by Dutch firm Eerland Certification, which stamped the cargo with the required EC (European Certification) symbol to certify that it met EU regulations.