Record sentence handed down in environmental prosecution
A Leeds waste operator has been jailed for seven years and six months for £2.2m fraud involving recycled electrical waste following an Environment Agency investigation.
Terence Solomon Dugbo, 45, of High Ash Avenue, Leeds, was sentenced on 15 July at Leeds Crown Court following a seven-week trial. The Environment Agency said this was a record sentence for an environmental crime.
Investigating officers discovered that Mr Dugbo had falsified paperwork to illegitimately claim that his firm TLC Recycling Ltd had collected and recycled more than 19,500 tonnes of household electrical waste during 2011.
This volume was fictitious and the firm was not entitled to the substantial recycling fees it received from producer compliance schemes - which pay for recycling of old electrical goods to offset the production of new equipment.
Seized documents showed that Dugbo’s company claimed money for waste collections from streets and properties that did not exist and that some vehicles shown as used for these purported collections had been in other parts of the UK at the times concerned.
Some of the vehicles Mr Dugbo claimed to have used did not exist, while others could not have carried the loads claimed.
In one case, for example, a moped was said to have carried 991 televisions and 413 refrigerators between Mr Dugbo’s premises.
Mr Dugbo has previous convictions for fraud and illegally exporting banned hazardous waste to Nigeria.
He denied conspiracy to defraud, acting as a company director while disqualified, and breaching an environmental permitting condition, but was found guilty on all counts.
EA senior environmental crime officer Paul Salter said: “Terry Dugbo’s illegal activities defrauded legitimate recycling schemes out of significant amounts of money.
“He masterminded and fabricated a flow of false paperwork that claimed his business was collecting and recycling vast amounts of waste electrical goods when in fact he wasn’t.”
Dr Salter said he hoped the lengthy sentence would deter others involved in environmental crime.
Sentencing, Judge Clarke said: “What I found really amazing was the amount and complexity of the false paperwork. The scale of the investigation here was enormous. It took Dr Salter and his team nearly a year to go through the documents they seized in the search of the premises.”
The judge disqualified Mr Dugbo from acting as a company director for 12 years, and agreed the EA’s request to begin a proceeds of crime against Mr Dugbo for £2.2m.
