The Environment Agency’s crackdown on waste management fraud has intensified with an arrest in one case and a penalty handed out in another.
A judge at Birmingham Crown Court on 16 May slapped a suspended two-year prison sentence on the director of a refuse-export business.
Shaobo Qin, 42, from Sutton Coldfield, was also ordered to pay a proceeds of crime confiscation order of £255,057 within two months after pleading guilty to fraud by false representation.
He was disqualified as a director for four years and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work, while his company, Edu Case of Portway Road in Rowley Regis, was fined £200,000.
The Environment Agency said the firm had “deliberately and systematically” entered false data about “”non-existent” exports on the watchdog’s national packaging waste database in 2022.
Meanwhile, in an unrelated case, the watchdog apprehended a 34-year-old man in Leeds on 21 May as part of an investigation into illegal recycling export paperwork.
He has been released pending ongoing investigations.
Environment Agency enforcement and investigations manager Emma Viner said: “We are calling time on fraud in the recycling sector, which undermines hard-working businesses and trashes our natural environment.”
