Kadis was not involved when the project was launched but the waste dumping continued under his watch for five years
As Costas Kadis heads to Brussels for his decisive grilling at the European parliament before being given the Commission’s oceans and fisheries portfolio, the cloud of scandalous mismanagement of waste treatment in Limassol is catching up with him.
Politico carried a story on Wednesday saying Kadis was aware of the imminent environmental disaster at the EU-funded plant in Pentakomo and that waste dumping continued under his watch for five years. He is due to be questioned by the European parliament for his hoped-for new portfolio in early November.
Shortly before being replaced as environment minister in early 2023, Kadis received a report saying that the government was responsible for years of illegal waste dumping in the southern region of Limassol, via a waste treatment project paid for by the EU.
In 2015, the European Union gave Cyprus over €46 million to build a public waste treatment facility in the village of Pentakomo that would sort and recycle the waste collected locally and use some of it to make fuel.
The money had been given on condition that the Cypriot government would find buyers for the fuel, but that fuel was never sold and has been buried, in contravention of EU law, ever since the plant began operating.
According to the report, the government of Cyprus knew the waste could not be used to make the right type of fuel before the project started but signed an agreement with the EU anyway.
Thousands of tonnes of unsorted household, medical and even hazardous industrial waste thrown into landfill led to a major ecological scandal in the region.
Now, questions about what he knew and when are resurfacing, as critics challenge Kadis’ legitimacy to hold one of the top jobs in Brussels, Politico said.
“Kadis was responsible for [Pentakomo] for five years. So, I don’t understand how anybody would trust him to be a commissioner,” Efi Xanthou, secretary general of the NGO Cyprus ecological movement and former deputy president of the Cyprus Green Party, said.
Politico asked Kadis what he knew about the scandal. He declined to comment.
The scandal prompted the cabinet – which included Kadis – to launch the internal investigation in 2019.
Since then, the ministry insists that the contractors who ran the facility are to blame, even though those contractors repeatedly warned the government of the ongoing problems at the plant.
Under Kadis, the environment ministry’s water development department (WDD) – which has handled waste management since 2017 – blamed Medcon for failing to make the right kind of fuel.
The auditor-general – who has since been fired – submitted a complaint to the EU’s anti-fraud office, OLAF, which launched an investigation against Medcon in 2020.
In December 2023, the WDD took over the plant, “due to the inability of the former contractor to produce secondary SRF/RDF fuel, suitable for energy recovery,” the Limassol chamber of commerce wrote in a statement about the dispute.
Politico asked the WDD whether they accept responsibility for the ongoing issues at Pentakomo and whether the waste and fuel are still illegally buried today. The department did not respond.
But according to letters sent by Medcon to the WDD, the government knew about the high moisture content before the company joined the project.
Under the EU Landfill Directive and the Waste Framework Directive, which member countries are required to follow, untreated waste must not be buried.
At Pentakomo, almost 60 per cent of waste is buried, the report states.
What’s more, the illegal landfilling has been happening under the ministry’s orders since 2017, including during Kadis’ mandate as minister, according to the report.
Although Kadis did not become minister until March 2018, his critics blame him for not putting an end to the landfilling during his mandate.
In 2016, more than a dozen government officials and consultants – some of whom were also involved in drafting the Pentakomo project tender – were convicted of crimes including bribery, theft, money laundering and document forgery.
Back in Limassol, Medcon has sued the state and repeatedly asked the European Commission to release the outcomes of the OLAF investigation.
According to a letter sent by the anti-fraud office to the company in December 2021, OLAF sent its conclusions to the European Commission “in order to take appropriate measures to ensure the recovery of the sums unduly paid.”
