BIR Congress: Mexican Recyclers Face Legal Challenges

In a quest to clamp down on metal thievery, the Mexican government has shut down scrap recycling companies and put employees and company owners in jail without charges.

Speaking to delegates at the Nonferrous Division Meeting at the 2011 Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) World Recycling Congress, Alejandro Jaramillo of Recicladora Cachanilla, Tijuana, Mexico, painted a grim picture of some of the actions taken by Mexico’s federal government.

Mexico’s utility companies (often victims of copper theft) have applied pressure to Mexico’s government to exert the extra-constitutional powers it applies to drug dealers against scrap recyclers.

As a result, said Jaramillo, “all private properties can be searched or raided without a search warrant.” As well, “police can detain anyone for up to two periods of 40 days each, on the sole suspicion of criminal behavior.”

Jaramillo said that scrap recyclers he knows have been taken to jail in this very manner and have had their yards searched. “The possession of goods ‘deemed’ as stolen carries jail time, no matter how many precautions were taken at the time of purchase,” he commented.

The situation is made worse for scrap recyclers because utility company employees can be considered “expert witnesses” by the prosecution and by a judicial system that Jaramillo said is “vulnerable to corruption.”

He stated, “It would be inaccurate to generalize, but when so many liberties are stripped away, and when the accusing party is admitted also as an expert witness, it is difficult to hope for fair trials.”

Jaramillo said the BIR has been “fully supportive” of its Mexican members, and at the Nonferrous Division meeting Division president Robert Stein directed the Division to “pursue an investigation” of the situation.

Jaramillo also acknowledged that Mexico’s scrap recyclers were not suitably organized or prepared to act in unison when the government’s tactics started. He said he brought his message to the BIR Congress in part “to serve as a warning for other regions—this could happen to you if you’re not pro-active in your country.”

The 2011 BIR World Recycling Convention was May 23-25 in Singapore.