On August 5, Basel Action Network, an environmental organization based in the United States, raised the alarm that a container ship of the Maersk line disappeared in late July from radars near Cape Town in South Africa, following a notification made by her to the local authorities.
Based on the data provided by a whistleblower, “Basel Action Network” believes that the ship ‘Maersk Campton’ and a second ship of the same line, ‘Maersk Candor’, have loaded in the port of Durrës at the beginning of July about 100 containers with hazardous waste, which comes from the ash of metallurgical chimneys in Albania, destined for Thailand.
Based on BAN’s signalling, the port authority has blocked the containers from Albania in Singapore and they are expected to return to the Albanian port of Durrës in the coming months.
The prosecution has identified the company “Sokolaj”, a mineral import-export company based in Durrës owned by Gjovana Sokolaj as the exporter of the containers and the Turkish company “Kurum International” as the source of these products.
The data provided by the BIRN agency from the investigation file show that the recipient of these cargoes is the company GS Minerals D.o.o registered in Rijeka, Croatia, also owned by the Sokolaj family.
According to BAN’s executive director, Jim Puckett, shipping containers to a non-OECD country like Thailand, with no proven capacity to recycle this type of waste, raises many a doubt.
The company “Kurum International” sh.a did not respond to BIRN’s questions until the publication of this article, but in a statement distributed to the media on August 21, it denied having anything to do with the export of hazardous waste.
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