August 15 (SeeNews) - Austrian waste management company FCC Austria Abfall Service is considering a halt of its investments in Serbia over the lack of legal certainty in the county, Vienna-based media reported.
"If there is no sufficient legal certainty in Serbia, we must consider whether to continue investing in the country," Austrian daily Kurier quoted the CEO of FCC Austria Abfall Service, Bjoern Mittendorfer, as saying last week.
The two managing directors of the Austrian company's unit in Serbia, Bojan Markovic and Goran Krstic, were detained in police custody at the beginning of July over suspected illegal storing of hazardous waste at a landfill in Kikinda, in the country's north.
"Of the 600 to 700 landfills that exist in Serbia, only six have a similarly high standard as we do. Last year alone, we were examined seven times by the authorities, there were never any complaints," Mittendorfer said.
Although there are no evaluated soil samples from the landfill and no charges have been brought against the two managers, the Serbian authorities have recently extended the detention of Markovic and Krstic by another 30 days, Mittendorfer noted.
To date, FCC Austria Abfall Service has invested 15 million euro ($17 million) and opened about 130 jobs in Serbia. The Austrian company, a subsidiary of Spanish environmental services group FCC, provides general waste solutions for the municipal, commercial and retail sectors as well as for domestic households in Serbia.
($ = 0.883781 euro)