Hugh O’Donnell has been ordered to pay £917,000 as part of an investigation into the illegal waste disposal site he ran near Reading. The O’Donnell case has already seen the longest jail sentence served for waste crimes, but now the largest fine too.
The organised crime boss had been operating an illegal waste site, larger than five football pitches, in Aldermaston near Reading. The Environment Agency and Police raided the site in 2008 and found illegal firearms, ammunition, stolen equipment and nearly £50,000 in cash.
O’Donnell was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for possession of illegal firearms immediately after the raid. Two concurrent prison sentences of four years for money laundering and 22 months for waste offences followed the firearms charge. Two accomplices received between 18 months and two years in prison.
At the sentencing hearing last June Judge Edmunds QC said the criminal operation was “deliberate, calculated offending on an industrial scale”.
The prosecution last week was the conclusion of the investigation by the London Regional Asset Recovery Team (RART) into the money laundering operation the waste site was part of. Under the Proceeds of Crime Act, O’Donnell has been ordered to pay £917,000 in recoverable assets or face another four and a half year prison sentence.
The calculated benefit figure, which records the savings O’Donnell made from operating an illegal site without permits, licences or having to properly dispose of waste, has been agreed at £3.3million.
“This investigation has been one of the biggest and most complex ever undertaken by the Environment Agency,” says Angus Innes, the Environment Agency Prosecution Team Leader. “Waste crime puts the environment and human health at risk and undermines legitimate waste businesses. The Environment Agency wants to make sure that serious waste crime doesn’t pay - we don’t just catch criminals, we want to confiscate the assets they’ve gained from crime.”
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