Police Searching Homes to Investigate Environmental Crime

Bratislava, October 15 (TASR) – The National Criminal Agency (NAKA) intervened in the Bratislava region on Monday morning, with the police currently conducting home searches and searches of other premises and plots of land in several locations in Bratislava, and the Senec and Pezinok districts (both Bratislava region), TASR was informed by Police spokesman Michal Szeiff on the same day.

“The procedures are being carried out with the participation of employees of the Slovak Environment Inspectorate and experts assessing the environmental damage,” said the spokesman. The searches are being conducted on the basis of a judge’s order. Further details on the case will be provided by the police when the procedural situation allows in order to avoid thwarting or making the investigation more complicated.

The intervention is allegedly connected with taking hazardous waste to a landfill also under the D4 bypass. The police began in July criminal prosecution for illegal handling of waste in connection with the alleged taking of hazardous contaminated soil from the former bus station site in Bratislava to the construction site of the D4 motorway and the R7 expressway in the case of unauthorised waste management.

The consortium building the bypass previously declared that the material used for the construction has valid quality certificates and that it passes strict criteria for assessing the suitability of its use for the construction including the condition of zero soil contamination.

The motions drawing attention to the use of hazardous building materials in the D4 and R7 construction relate to the alleged taking of contaminated soil from Bratislava’s bus station to the section of the construction around Bratislava’s borough of Podunajske Biskupice and village of Ivanka pri Dunaji (Bratislava region).