Fariba Vancor and ten other people are accused of serious environmental crimes or complicity in them in one of the largest environmental criminal trials in Swedish history.
The self-titled “trash queen”. Fariba Vancor spoke for the first time yesterday at a trial where he is accused of serious environmental crimes such as digging toxic waste into the ground.
– I don’t know anything about environmental issues, and that’s why I trusted the leading experts in the field in Sweden, Vancor, formerly known as Bella Nilssonsaid in court.
Vancor and ten other people are accused of serious environmental crimes or complicity in them in one of the largest environmental criminal trials in Swedish history.
The waste management company Think Pink, founded by Vancor, is accused, among other things, of digging into the ground or improperly handling up to 200,000 tons of waste and building demolition material.
A significant part of the waste is toxic. Waste has been found in at least 21 different places in central Sweden.
The Swedish public broadcasting company SVT describes what happened as Sweden’s most serious environmental scandal.
Vancor maintains his innocence and has called the trial a “witch hunt.” He has not commented on the charges before, because he has considered the investigation of environmental crimes to be biased.
According to Vancor, his company cooperated all the time with local authorities and leading environmental experts.
– We never received fines, if I remember correctly, he said during the trial at the Attunda district court in Sollentuna.
Environmental damage is still being cleaned up
Think Pink’s operating model and earning logic was based on the fact that it transported construction waste away from construction sites at an affordable price.
The company’s pink sacks were a familiar sight in Swedish cities in 2018–2020. Vancor was the award-winning founder of a company that became rich and received a lot of publicity.
However, it was soon revealed that the company’s landfills contained dangerous amounts of substances such as arsenic and petroleum products.
One of the unauthorized landfills caught fire in February 2019. It was difficult to extinguish the burning industrial waste, and the authorities were afraid of harmful emissions into waterways.
It was soon revealed that there were indeed dangerously high concentrations of poisons in the waterways. In the municipality of Botkyrkan, the authorities have to clean the municipality’s waterways further.