Swedish Executive Gets 6 Year Prison Term For Dumping Hundreds Of 1,000s Of Tons Of Toxic Trash

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A Swedish entrepreneur who once called herself the “queen of trash” has been sentenced to six years in prison for illegally dumping hundreds of thousands of tonnes of toxic waste in the country’s biggest environmental crime case.

Fariba Vancor, previously known as Bella Nilsson and the former chief executive of waste management company Think Pink, was convicted on Tuesday of 19 counts of serious environmental crimes. Her ex-husband Thomas Nilsson was found guilty of 12 counts of serious environmental crimes and sentences to three years and six months in prison.

Of the 11 people who went on trial in September, all but one of them were convicted of environmental crimes by the Södertörn district court in Huddinge, near Stockholm. Niklas Schüllerqvist, one of the judges in the case, said Think Pink’s dumping had posed “great risks to people and the environment” and compared the business to “a kind of pyramid scheme”.

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Think Pink was hired to dispose of unwanted waste – largely building materials – by municipalities, building companies, apartment cooperatives and individuals. But the company did not deal with it appropriately, instead abandoning the unsorted waste illegally in piles at 19 locations across Sweden. High levels of toxic PCB compounds, lead, mercury, arsenic and chemicals were released into the air, soil and water, posing a danger to human, animal and plant life.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/17/swedish-queen-of-trash-jailed-for-dumping-hundreds-of-thousands-of-tons-of-toxic-waste