Belgium

'Cura mess'

Poor quality bunker oil leads to many more pollutant emissions. It is also disastrous for marine engines. A skipper told Follow the Money in 2022 that bad oil caused problems with the main engine of the ship he was working on.

Not an immediate problem, the crew thought. But more than a week later, still on the high seas, they realized things were really bad. "At that point we had already consumed about two-thirds of our fuel. When we went to take a look, we saw that the steel parts of the engine were chemically eaten away."

Despite the obvious damage caused by their work, it is difficult to really firmly punish fraudulent fuel mixers.

The Asphalt Lake scandal brought Oilchart director Christian K. and co-director Sonja V. before the criminal court in Antwerp's Butterfly Palace in late April. "There is no question of recycling," stated a sharp prosecutor. "One scrambles waste."

The company and its management must answer for three shipments from Curaçao to Antwerp. They are suspected of violating European and Flemish regulations regarding the transport of waste materials, and of participating in a criminal organization.

In intercepted telephone conversations, the directors spoke to each other about "junk," "processing junk," and "Cura junk," according to the prosecutor's office. A correspondence between the shareholders and a Curaçao minister shows, according to the prosecution, that V. and K. were aware that they were processing waste materials as if they were raw materials.

In a two-hour substantiation of the penalty sentence, the Antwerp prosecutor painted a picture of "fairly extensive and complexly organized international waste shipments in the bunker oil sector." She also spoke of "organized international environmental fraud" and accused the defendants of having been in no way transparent about the composition of the asphalt and diluent.

For the prosecution, the motives can be summed up in two terms: profit and securing investments.

Cabinet-Schauvliege

The Lake Asphalt case is primarily a case about whether something is a "commodity" or a "waste. That discussion has been going on at Oilchart for some time. In 2014, both the Public Waste Agency of Flanders (OVAM) and the Belgian environmental inspection already came up with a clear verdict: Oilchart processed waste in its marine fuel.

But the company did not give in. It took a chance with Hugo Geerts, the then deputy chief of cabinet of Flemish Environment Minister Joke Schauvliege (CD&V).

That overruled the judgment of both environmental authorities. Geerts, a waste policy expert with both a past at the public waste company and a private waste processor, ruled single-handedly that Oilchart was importing "raw materials" and not "waste materials.

According to the attorney, Oilchart deliberately did not conduct a procedure to obtain a raw material declaration (which establishes that a substance is a raw material), the attorney further indicated. "One was not transparent in any way about the composition of the asphalt and solvents. Instead, they tried to mislead the controlling authorities. The office of the minister in charge was called in to overrule the controlling authorities."

"Following correct procedure was not the strategy, neither was supplying quality bunker oil." For the prosecution, it is clear why that commodity declaration was never applied for. "The application should have identified the imported material," it sounded. "Oilchart should also provide an overview of the production process with description of the input streams."

Geerts' intervention in the discussion between Oilchart and the Flemish government brought him into the sights of justice in 2017.

In October 2018, investigators from the Judicial Police searched his office because the prosecution suspected that Geerts had been bribed. Geerts was ultimately not prosecuted because no evidence of corruption was found. Nevertheless, the Flemish government asked the criminal court to award moral damages, as the aggrieved party. "Good faith was outsmarted," the Flemish government argued.