POPs IN AFRICA HAZARDOUS WASTE TRADE 1980 - 2000 ... - Arte

Scheme: Intercontract/Lindaco
Date: 1988
Type of Waste: Industrial
Source: U.S., Europe and Australia
Exporter: Intercontract S.A. (Switzerland) and Lindaco
Pretext/Fate: Dumping, and A Large Sum of Money
Status: Postponed
In late May 1988, Guinea Bissau postponed a deal with U.S. and
European waste brokers that would have brought 15 million
metric tons of foreign industrial wastes into the country over a
five-year period. The proposed payment was $40 per ton of
waste. The total potential payment of $600 million is four times
the country’s gross national product, and twice the country’s
foreign debt. The industrial wastes would have been imported
through Binta, Guinea Bissau. An official of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency described the port of Binta,
where the wastes would have been offloaded, as “a rickety little
dock.”
The wastes would have been dumped in one or two landfills near
the Senegal border. The land was reportedly owned by Carlos
Bernard Vieira, brother of the president of Guinea Bissau.
According to geological consultants hired to survey the proposed
dumping site, the land is porous and waterlogged during the rainy
season. According to numerous reports, the waste deal was
masterminded by Gianfranco Ambrosini, an Italian waste broker
who has arranged numerous shipments of Italian wastes to less
industrialized countries. Ambrosini is the manager of Intercontrat
S.A. of Fribourg, Switzerland. Other firms involved in the deal
included:
• BIS Import-Export Ltd. of London. Reporters from South
Magazine searched in vain for the company’s offices in London.
The company was registered at 11 Eccleston Square, London, but
there was no evidence that the company had ever been located at
that address. The company was believed to have been formed
exclusively for this deal.
• Hobday Ltd., Isle of Man. In a March 24, 1988 memo from
the director of the Guinea Bissau Applied Technology Research
Center, Hobday was listed, along with BIS Import-Export Ltd.,
as having signed a contract that would bring 1 to 3 million tons
of European wastes to Guinea Bissau each year. However, in a
July 27, 1988, letter to Greenpeace, the director of Hobday stated
that Hobday had “not signed any agreements with anyone and is
not connected with this distasteful industry in any way
whatsoever...It is true that the company was approached in
connection with waste disposal but the directors rejected the
offer.”
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