Ecology, Financial Services, Latvia, Legislation, Transport

The VVD said it had also decided to terminate the agreement with Riepu Bloki, thus kicking it out of the hazardous waste management system, which means that the company and its cooperation partners will no longer be eligible to the relevant tax rebate.

The environmental service said that Riepu Bloki had breached many regulations. Among other things, it had failed to arrange for recycling of used tires and ignored previous instructions from the VVD about removing excess tires from its territory in Riga. Instead, the company had bought even more tires.

Aivars Grube, the head of Riepu Bloki, said earlier that in order to send the tires for recycling abroad they had had to get more tires because foreign companies would only agree to a deal involving very large amounts of tires.

He also said that the fines of EUR 1,500 and EUR 5,000 that the VVD had imposed on the company previously would not help to solve the problem of how to get rid of the tires. If one more fine was slapped on Riepu Bloki, the company will file for insolvency and then disposal of those tires would become the problem of the Latvian government, Grube said.

According to Firmas.lv business information website, Riepu Bloki closed last year with a loss of EUR 31,400 on a turnover of EUR 220,000. In fact, the company had been operating at a loss and with turnovers no higher than EUR 0.2 million for the last five years. Riepu Bloki has a share capital of close to EUR 57,000 and is fully owned by Eko Alternative, a company owned by several Latvian individuals, which last year reported zero turnover and a loss of nearly EUR 5,000.