35,000 Metric Tons of Hazardous Waste: Croatia’s Pollution Scandal Tests the Meaning of Environmental Crime

ECOCIDE

A criminal investigation involving at least 35,000 metric tons of suspected illegally disposed hazardous waste has developed into one of Croatia’s most consequential environmental scandals, raising questions that now reach far beyond the contaminated ground around the city of Gospić. What began as an investigation into an alleged cross-border waste-trafficking network has become a test of how effectively Croatia can prevent environmental crime, protect communities once contamination has occurred, and hold those who profit from illegal disposal accountable for the damage left behind.

At the center of the case is a former industrial site in Gospić, in Croatia’s mountainous Lika region, where enormous quantities of waste were allegedly buried or dumped rather than processed through legitimate treatment systems. Europol said in February 2025 that Croatian authorities had arrested 13 people suspected of involvement in a criminal network that illegally imported hazardous waste from Italy, Slovenia and Germany before disposing of it in Croatia, estimating that at least 35,000 metric tons had been handled illegally and that the operation generated at least €4 million in illicit profit.

As the investigation and environmental assessment have progressed, Croatian authorities have used slightly different estimates for the quantity of material involved, with figures generally ranging between approximately 34,000 and 37,000 metric tons. The precise total continues to depend on which location and phase of the investigation is being described, but the essential fact is unchanged: authorities are dealing with tens of thousands of metric tons of material that should have passed through controlled waste-treatment systems but instead became part of an alleged criminal enterprise.

The scandal has become increasingly urgent during 2026 because testing has moved the debate beyond fears about what might be beneath the ground. Expert assessments have documented environmental contamination around the site, further analysis has detected PFAS compounds and microplastics in groundwater close to the affected area, and authorities are now preparing a remediation operation complicated by the scale and nature of the waste and Croatia’s limited domestic capacity for treating some hazardous materials.

At the same time, Croatia is preparing stronger criminal legislation for severe environmental destruction, including a proposed new offense that government ministers have described as ecocide. Not For Sale examined those proposals in Croatia Moves to Criminalize Ecocide, With Prison Sentences of Up to 40 Years Proposed, and the timing gives the Gospić scandal wider significance because it demonstrates what serious environmental crime can look like before new legal definitions and tougher sentences ever reach a courtroom.

What This Article Covers

This article examines how an alleged European waste-trafficking operation resulted in tens of thousands of metric tons of material being illegally disposed of in Croatia, why official estimates have ranged from approximately 35,000 to 37,000 metric tons, and what investigators have established about contamination around the Gospić site. It also looks at the detection of PFAS and microplastics in nearby groundwater, the important distinction between contamination around the illegal dump and the safety of the public drinking-water supply, and why delays in removing the waste have become a national political issue.

The wider question is what the scandal tells us about environmental crime itself. Gospić exposes an economic model in which avoiding the cost of lawful waste treatment can generate millions of euros in profit while environmental risks are transferred to communities and the state, raising difficult questions about whether tougher criminal penalties will ever be sufficient without stronger prevention, cross-border enforcement, corporate accountability and remediation.

Key Takeaways

Europol estimates that the alleged criminal network illegally handled at least 35,000 metric tons of hazardous waste and generated at least €4 million through its activities, with material believed to have originated predominantly in Italy as well as Slovenia and Germany. Investigators suspect hazardous waste was in some instances represented as recyclable material, potentially allowing those involved to avoid the substantially higher costs associated with lawful treatment and disposal.

Environmental testing has since identified contamination around the Gospić site, including hazardous substances and evidence of microplastics in groundwater close to the affected area. Croatian authorities have nevertheless stressed that testing of the public drinking-water system has not established the same contamination, meaning the evidence supports serious concern about localized environmental damage without supporting claims that Gospić’s municipal drinking water has been poisoned.

The case has also become a test of confidence in Croatia’s environmental institutions because much of the material remained in place long after the initial criminal investigation became public. Tens of thousands of people protested in Zagreb on September 5, 2026, demanding faster remediation and greater accountability, while the government has argued that procurement requirements, the technical nature of the waste and limited specialist disposal capacity have complicated the response.

Why This Story Matters Now

For much of the period following the first arrests, the Gospić case remained primarily an environmental investigation and a local concern. During August and September 2026, however, new scientific findings, growing public anger and the Croatian government’s simultaneous push to strengthen environmental criminal law transformed it into a national debate about what happens when the legal system identifies serious ecological harm but communities are left waiting for the physical source of that harm to be removed.

The scale of that frustration became visible on September 5, when tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Zagreb over delays to the remediation process. The protest reflected concern not simply about what had allegedly happened in Gospić, but about the wider ability of Croatian institutions to respond quickly when environmental crime creates risks that can continue long after police and prosecutors have intervened.

The scientific evidence has also developed. Croatia’s Ombudswoman reported in August that expert assessment had confirmed contamination of soil, vegetation and habitats around the illegal disposal site, along with hazardous chemicals in groundwater downstream, while experts warned that the ecosystem had been severely degraded and that the waste remained a continuing source of environmental and potential health risk.

Further results followed in September. USKOK released groundwater analysis on September 7 concerning microplastics around the Gospić site, and on September 9 published additional material concerning PFAS compounds in waste, continuing a process in which environmental evidence from the criminal investigation has increasingly been made public because of the level of national concern.

How 35,000 Tonnes of Waste Became a Criminal Investigation

The scale of the alleged operation first became internationally visible in February 2025, when Europol announced that Croatian authorities had arrested 13 people suspected of participating in an organized environmental crime network. Investigators alleged that legitimate companies and commercial transport infrastructure had been used to move waste into Croatia before it was disposed of illegally rather than undergoing the treatment required by law.

Much of the material was believed to have originated in Italy, with additional waste coming from Slovenia and Germany. Reports from the investigation have described a mixture of waste streams, including industrial, plastic, electronic and medical material, while investigators have examined whether documentation was used to represent some hazardous material as recyclable waste.

The allegations show why contemporary environmental crime can be considerably more sophisticated than the familiar image of somebody simply dumping waste illegally. International waste movements depend on companies, documentation, transport operators, classification systems, permits and regulatory oversight, and those same legitimate structures can potentially be manipulated to conceal unlawful activity.

That wider system is important because environmental crime often becomes profitable precisely where traceability fails. Not For Sale has explored a similar mechanism in a different criminal economy in From Illegal Mines to Forced Labor: How Corruption Connects Ecocide and Human Trafficking, where apparently legitimate commercial pathways can obscure the illegal origin of commodities and separate those who ultimately benefit financially from the harm created at the source.

Why Illegal Waste Can Be So Profitable

Properly managing hazardous waste is expensive because dangerous material has to be identified, classified, transported, treated, recovered or securely disposed of under controlled conditions. Businesses pay for those processes because mishandling hazardous material can leave consequences in soil, water and ecosystems that remain long after the waste itself has disappeared from commercial records.

A criminal operator can potentially create significant profits by accepting payment for compliant disposal and then avoiding the expense of actually providing it. If hazardous material is instead buried, abandoned or falsely classified, the immediate treatment cost disappears from the offender’s balance sheet while the environmental liability is transferred to somebody else.

Europol estimated that the suspected Croatian operation generated at least €4 million in illicit profit. The unusual feature of waste crime is therefore that the material itself does not necessarily possess value, because the profit can come from being paid to solve an expensive problem and then transferring that problem onto a community, ecosystem or government instead.

This economic logic helps explain why environmental crime increasingly needs to be understood as more than a regulatory failure. When systematic environmental wrongdoing can produce millions of euros in revenue, investigators need to examine company structures, contracts, documentation and financial flows alongside the physical evidence of pollution.

What Has Actually Been Found in Gospić?

The significance of the investigation changed substantially when environmental assessment began establishing measurable damage rather than simply the presence of suspicious waste. Croatia’s Ombudswoman said expert findings confirmed pollution of soil, vegetation and habitats at the illegal disposal site, as well as hazardous chemicals in groundwater downstream, and warned that the waste remained a continuing source of danger unless remediation took place.

Further groundwater analysis released in September examined microplastic particles in samples taken around Gospić. USKOK made the findings available as part of its ongoing investigation into suspected environmental and economic offenses allegedly committed through a criminal association, although the publication of environmental results should not be confused with a final determination of criminal responsibility.

The geographical context makes groundwater particularly important. The Ombudswoman has highlighted that Gospić lies within a karst region where underground water systems require particular attention, meaning the behavior and possible movement of contaminants cannot necessarily be understood by examining only the ground immediately beneath the dumping location.

This is where the Gospić case begins to demonstrate the difference between an ordinary waste offense and environmental harm capable of lasting far beyond the act that created it. Not For Sale’s guide What Is Ecocide? Meaning, Definition, Examples and the Human Cost explains why severity, scale, duration and ecological consequences matter when discussing the developing concept of ecocide, while also making clear that not every pollution incident reaches that exceptional threshold.

PFAS, Groundwater and What the Evidence Means

PFAS are a large family of manufactured chemicals used for properties such as resistance to water, grease and heat, and some are known for their extreme persistence in the environment. Public concern around their detection is therefore understandable, but the significance of any result depends on which PFAS have been identified, their concentration, where they have been found and whether people are being exposed through relevant pathways.

On September 9, USKOK published an expert opinion from Croatia’s public-health authorities concerning the presence and concentration of PFAS compounds in waste at the Gospić site. That followed weeks of public debate about contamination around the illegal dump and increased pressure on the government to explain clearly what monitoring had found and what risks residents actually faced.

The distinction between groundwater around the dumping area and water entering the public supply remains particularly important. The Croatian government has said measurements and public-health analysis continue to show that water from the public drinking-water system is safe, while monitoring of the wider environmental situation continues.

Both parts of that picture need to remain visible. It would be wrong to dismiss documented environmental contamination simply because public drinking water currently tests safe, but it would be equally irresponsible to imply that evidence of pollution close to the waste site automatically means the municipal drinking-water supply has been contaminated.

The Pollution Scandal Has Become a Crisis of Public Trust

Environmental emergencies frequently become political crises when communities believe institutions knew about a risk but responded too slowly. In Gospić, frustration has grown because the criminal investigation became public in early 2025, yet enormous quantities of suspected hazardous material remained at the site well into the following year.

Croatia’s Ombudswoman began raising concerns over illegal waste disposal in February 2025 and has repeatedly called for clearer public information, environmental monitoring and remediation. Her August 2026 intervention argued that the expert evidence now made the need for action more pressing because the waste constituted a continuing source of danger and further environmental harm remained possible without remediation.

The Croatian government has responded that the scale and complexity of the operation cannot be resolved by simply sending trucks to the site. Hazardous material has to be characterized, excavated safely, transported by qualified operators and delivered to suitable facilities, while procurement rules and limited domestic treatment capacity have added further complications.

In early September, officials said several procurement processes were underway and that the government had the ability to accelerate parts of the process if necessary. Deputy Prime Minister Branko Bačić said on September 9 that the removal and remediation process was in progress and that initial physical work would begin soon.

For residents, however, the central question remains straightforward. If authorities know that large quantities of illegally disposed material are present and environmental assessments describe an ongoing risk, the public understandably wants to know why the source of that risk remains in place and when it will finally be removed.

Environmental Crime Is Not the Same as an Environmental Accident

One of the defining features of the Gospić investigation is that prosecutors are not examining an unforeseen industrial accident or a technical failure that unexpectedly caused pollution. The allegations concern deliberate commercial behavior in which hazardous waste was allegedly moved or disposed of improperly as part of a profit-making operation.

This distinction changes how the environmental damage should be understood. Where contamination is the consequence of an accident, investigators ask whether safety systems failed or negligence occurred, whereas an organized environmental-crime investigation asks whether avoiding environmental protections formed part of the economic model itself.

That does not mean everyone under investigation is guilty, and those accused remain entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence. It does mean the case presents a much broader question about whether environmental law is capable of addressing businesses or criminal organizations that can treat noncompliance not as an error, but as a source of revenue.

Not For Sale’s reporting on Illegal Gold Mining in Peru: Why Amazon Destruction Is Also a Forced Labor Story explores this profit mechanism in another context, showing how environmental destruction can become embedded inside economies where illegal activity continues because the rewards remain high and accountability is fragmented across multiple actors.

Is the Gospić Scandal Ecocide?

The Gospić investigation should not currently be described as a proven case of ecocide. Croatia’s proposed offense of particularly serious environmental crime is part of a new legislative reform, and conduct alleged to have occurred before the law enters into force cannot simply be relabeled under a tougher future criminal provision.

There is also an important substantive distinction between environmental crime and ecocide. Ecocide is generally used to describe destruction at an exceptionally serious level, and the developing legal frameworks around it consider factors including severity, geographical extent, duration and potentially irreversible ecological consequences rather than treating every illegal disposal or pollution incident as the same type of offense.

This is why the connection between the two Croatian stories is useful without needing to claim that they are legally identical. The Gospić scandal shows what organized environmental crime can leave behind, while Croatia’s proposed ecocide legislation asks how criminal law should respond if environmental destruction reaches an even more serious threshold.

Readers who want the legal context can explore Not For Sale’s Croatia ecocide law investigation and the broader explainer Ecocide: The Growing Campaign to Make Severe Environmental Destruction an International Crime. Together, they explain both Croatia’s current proposal and the much larger international debate over whether exceptional environmental destruction should eventually be treated alongside the gravest categories of crime.

Gospić Is Also a Test of Europe’s New Environmental Crime Framework

The scandal arrives as Europe is fundamentally strengthening its approach to environmental criminal law. The European Union’s revised Environmental Crime Directive expands the range of conduct member states must criminalize and strengthens expectations around penalties, corporate responsibility, investigative capacity, specialist expertise and cross-border cooperation.

The importance of cross-border enforcement is obvious in a case such as Gospić because the waste allegedly originated in several European countries before ending up at Croatian disposal sites. If investigators examine only the location where material was eventually buried, they risk seeing the environmental consequence while missing the international commercial system that allowed it to reach that point.

Not For Sale examined the new European framework in From Directive to Justice: The EU’s Stronger Environmental Crime Laws and What They Mean for Planet Protection. That analysis matters here because Gospić provides a concrete example of why Europe has increasingly moved away from treating environmental offenses as minor compliance matters and toward viewing the most serious cases as forms of criminal conduct requiring coordinated investigation and significant penalties.

The real test of those reforms will not be how severe sentences appear on paper. It will be whether enforcement agencies can detect illegal environmental activity before thousands of metric tons of material cross borders, whether companies can be held accountable when commercial structures conceal wrongdoing, and whether environmental damage is remedied quickly when prevention fails.

Who Ultimately Bears the Consequences?

One of the clearest inequalities in environmental crime is the distance between the people who benefit financially from unlawful activity and the people who live with its consequences. If investigators are correct that millions of euros were generated through the illegal handling of waste, those commercial gains were realized long before Gospić residents began hearing about contaminated soil, groundwater testing, PFAS, microplastics and a complicated remediation timetable.

Residents have also had to navigate technical and sometimes frightening information about environmental risk. Clear official communication matters enormously in those circumstances because confirmed contamination around an illegal waste site can rapidly become confused with broader claims that available evidence does not support.

The Croatian government continues to state that public drinking water remains safe according to measurements conducted so far, while environmental investigation and monitoring continue around the affected site. Public confidence depends on authorities being equally clear about both findings, acknowledging the seriousness of confirmed pollution without exaggerating or minimizing the risks established by the evidence.

Environmental harm also extends beyond immediate human exposure. Soil, groundwater, vegetation and habitats are connected systems, meaning contamination can create expensive and technically challenging problems even where an immediate health impact has not yet been demonstrated.

Does This Connect to Human Trafficking or Modern-Day Slavery?

There is currently no credible evidence that the Gospić case itself involves human trafficking, forced labor or modern-day slavery, and it would be misleading to construct such a connection without evidence. Not For Sale’s work at the intersection of environmental destruction and human exploitation depends on recognizing where those links genuinely exist while being equally clear where they have not been established.

The wider relevance is systemic rather than case-specific. Environmental crime, human trafficking, illegal extraction, corruption and other organized criminal economies can all benefit from opaque company ownership, weak regulatory oversight, false documentation, fragmented supply chains and the ability to move commodities, money or people across jurisdictions without their origins being closely examined.

In industries such as illegal mining, evidence of a much more direct connection does exist. Not For Sale’s investigation From Illegal Mines to Forced Labor: How Corruption Connects Ecocide and Human Trafficking examines how corruption can simultaneously weaken environmental enforcement and labor protections, while Illegal Gold Mining in Peru: Why Amazon Destruction Is Also a Forced Labor Story looks specifically at documented forced-labor and trafficking risks within parts of the gold economy of Madre de Dios.

The same concern extends into global legal supply chains. Not For Sale’s analysis of how human trafficking, environmental destruction and critical minerals are connected shows why traceability matters when raw materials move through multiple companies and countries before reaching consumers, because distance from the original source can make both ecological destruction and labor exploitation easier to conceal.

Gospić presents a different form of that traceability problem. Instead of asking where a valuable raw material came from, investigators are asking where unwanted hazardous material went, but in both cases the chain of responsibility can become increasingly difficult to see once commodities, documents, companies and borders separate the final consequence from the decisions that created it.

The Cleanup May Be Almost as Complex as the Investigation

Removing hazardous waste on this scale is not simply a matter of loading material onto trucks. Waste has to be classified and excavated without unnecessarily spreading contamination, temporarily contained where necessary, transported under controlled conditions and delivered to facilities authorized and technically capable of treating or permanently disposing of it.

The Croatian government has said several different operations are required at Gospić. In September, Bačić described plans to remove approximately 650 metric tons of non-hazardous bagged waste, cover buried hazardous material to reduce rainwater infiltration, and proceed with arrangements for several thousand metric tons of loose hazardous waste while the much larger remediation process continues.

These technical complications explain why safe remediation cannot be improvised, but they cannot justify indefinite delay either. The same environmental evidence that requires authorities to handle the material carefully also demonstrates why leaving a continuing source of contamination in place cannot become the long-term solution.

The question is therefore not whether cleanup should happen quickly or safely, because it has to achieve both. Effective environmental governance means having the legal authority, expertise, specialist contractors and disposal capacity ready enough that a community does not have to wait years for known environmental hazards to be addressed.

Who Should Pay for the Damage?

The millions of euros allegedly generated by illegal waste handling represent only one side of the economics of the scandal. Investigation, environmental monitoring, excavation, transportation, specialist treatment and long-term remediation can leave governments facing substantial costs after an offender has already taken the financial benefit of avoiding proper disposal.

That imbalance is part of what makes environmental crime economically attractive. If businesses can retain the savings created by unlawful disposal while taxpayers finance the cleanup once authorities discover the damage, the environmental and financial risks are being transferred away from those who created them.

Any eventual recovery from individuals or companies must depend on legal responsibility being established, and criminal proceedings cannot be bypassed simply because environmental remediation is urgent. Governments nevertheless need mechanisms that allow them to address immediate hazards before a lengthy prosecution concludes and then pursue responsible parties for appropriate costs once liability has been determined.

This principle reaches beyond Croatia. Environmental criminal law becomes significantly weaker if the only consequence of a profitable offense is a fine or sentence years later while society permanently absorbs the much larger cost of repairing the landscape.

What Governments Need to Learn From Gospić

The politically obvious response to serious environmental crime is often to increase punishment. Croatia is already considering exceptionally severe criminal sentences for its proposed ecocide offense, while European law more broadly is strengthening sanctions and corporate responsibility for major environmental wrongdoing.

Stronger penalties can matter, particularly where criminal organizations calculate that potential profits outweigh the consequences of being caught. They are much less useful, however, if authorities only identify the operation after tens of thousands of metric tons of hazardous material have already crossed borders and entered the ground.

Effective prevention requires environmental regulators, customs services, police, prosecutors and financial investigators to see different parts of the same system. Waste classifications must be verifiable, unusual commercial movements need scrutiny, companies handling dangerous material require meaningful oversight, and financial investigation should establish who benefits when environmental obligations are avoided.

Europe also needs stronger cooperation between countries at the beginning and end of waste chains. The environmental consequences may emerge in Croatia, but if material originated elsewhere in Europe and passed through international commercial networks before reaching Gospić, prevention cannot be Croatia’s responsibility alone.

What Not For Sale’s Perspective Adds

The Gospić scandal demonstrates why environmental harm is best understood not only as a contaminated piece of land, but as the end of a chain of decisions. Before waste reaches an illegal disposal site, somebody generates it, somebody classifies it, somebody agrees to accept it, somebody organizes transportation, somebody completes documentation and somebody benefits financially from what happens next.

That chain matters because serious environmental and human exploitation can flourish when responsibility is fragmented across multiple actors. By the time damage becomes visible, the decisions that produced it may be scattered across different businesses, contractual relationships and countries, making the people or companies that benefited from the system increasingly difficult to connect to its consequences.

This is the same reason Not For Sale places such importance on supply-chain transparency in sectors where environmental destruction and human exploitation do overlap. Whether investigators are following illegal gold from a mine into international markets or tracing hazardous waste from a legitimate European business to an illegal dump, the fundamental question is similar: who handled it, who was paid, what records were created, where did it actually go, and who benefited from making the true origin or destination difficult to see?

Readers looking for the broader language around these systems can also explore Not For Sale’s Ecocide Terms and Definitions glossary, which explains the distinctions between ecocide, environmental crime, illegal extraction, forced labor and related concepts without collapsing them into a single category.

What Still Needs to Happen in Croatia

The immediate priority is remediation because material described by environmental experts as a continuing source of risk must be removed, treated, contained or otherwise made safe through a process that protects local residents, cleanup workers and surrounding ecosystems. Government statements in early September indicate that several procurement procedures are active and that initial work is expected to begin soon, but public confidence will depend increasingly on visible progress rather than further announcements.

Environmental monitoring will also need to continue after the most visible waste begins to disappear. Findings relating to soil, groundwater, PFAS and microplastics mean that removing material cannot be treated as the end of the scientific process, particularly in an area where groundwater behavior can be complex.

Transparency is equally important because residents need understandable information about what has been detected, what has not been detected, whether risks are changing and what each stage of the remediation process is intended to achieve. The government should be able to reassure people when evidence supports reassurance while acknowledging uncertainty where scientific work is still underway.

Finally, Croatia and its European partners need to address how an alleged environmental crime operation of this scale was able to function in the first place. Removing tens of thousands of metric tons from Gospić without strengthening the systems that track hazardous waste across borders would address the immediate environmental damage while leaving the underlying vulnerability available to the next criminal network.

What Readers Can Do

The most useful response to an environmental scandal is not to amplify the most frightening interpretation of every new finding, but to follow the verified evidence as it develops. That means distinguishing contamination in groundwater close to the illegal disposal area from the separate question of municipal drinking-water safety and recognizing that scientific uncertainty is not the same thing as evidence that no problem exists.

The case also provides a reason to think differently about what happens to waste after it leaves a hospital, factory, office or household. Modern economies rely on complex international systems for handling materials that cannot simply be discarded safely, and the further those systems extend across contractors and borders, the more important transparency becomes.

Readers can also deepen their understanding of why environmental offenses are increasingly being treated as serious crimes rather than technical violations. Not For Sale’s EU environmental crime analysis and guide to the meaning and human cost of ecocide provide useful context for understanding why cases such as Gospić are now influencing a much broader legal conversation.

The significance of 35,000 metric tons lies not only in the extraordinary physical scale of the waste, but in the chain of decisions that allowed so much material to end up where it did. Investigators believe an alleged criminal operation was able to generate millions of euros while avoiding the true cost of safe waste treatment, leaving the environmental and financial consequences to communities and public institutions.

Croatia’s response will therefore test something much larger than whether one illegal dumping site can eventually be cleaned. The country is simultaneously debating some of Europe’s toughest new environmental criminal penalties, including a proposed offense of ecocide, yet Gospić demonstrates that accountability after environmental destruction is only one part of an effective system.

A decades-long prison sentence may eventually deter some offenders and appropriately punish the most serious environmental crimes, but no criminal sentence can remove contamination that has already entered soil or groundwater. The stronger measure of environmental law is whether it can make schemes like this harder to organize, harder to disguise and substantially less profitable before tens of thousands of metric tons of hazardous material enter the ground.

That is the challenge Gospić now presents to Croatia, and increasingly to Europe as a whole.

FAQ

What happened in the Gospić hazardous-waste scandal?

Croatian authorities are investigating an alleged criminal network suspected of illegally transporting and disposing of large quantities of hazardous waste, including material originating elsewhere in Europe. The investigation has since developed into a major environmental and political controversy as testing has identified contamination around the Gospić disposal site.

How much waste is involved in the Croatia pollution scandal?

Different official and news reports have used figures between approximately 34,000 and 37,000 metric tons depending on the location and scope being described. Europol originally referred to at least 35,000 metric tons across the suspected illegal operation, while more recent reporting around Gospić has frequently referred to approximately 37,000 metric tons.

Where did the hazardous waste come from?

Investigators have said waste connected to the alleged network originated from Italy, Slovenia and Germany, with much of it reportedly coming from Italy. Authorities are examining the commercial and transport networks through which the material entered Croatia before allegedly being disposed of illegally.

Why would anyone illegally dump hazardous waste?

Proper hazardous-waste treatment can be expensive, creating a financial incentive for criminal operators to accept payment for compliant disposal while avoiding the cost of actually carrying it out. In the Croatian investigation, Europol estimated that the alleged operation generated at least €4 million in illicit profit.

Has environmental contamination been confirmed in Gospić?

Yes, expert findings summarized by Croatia’s Ombudswoman confirmed pollution affecting soil, vegetation and habitats around the site and reported hazardous chemicals in groundwater downstream. Experts warned that the waste remained a continuing source of danger and that further harm was possible without remediation.

Have microplastics been found in groundwater?

USKOK released a physical and chemical analysis of microplastics in groundwater samples from the Gospić location on September 7, 2026. The findings form part of the broader environmental evidence being examined while the criminal investigation remains ongoing.

Have PFAS been detected at the site?

USKOK published a Croatian public-health expert opinion on September 9 examining the presence and concentration of PFAS compounds in waste at the Gospić location. Authorities have continued to distinguish environmental findings around the site from testing of the public drinking-water network.

Is Gospić’s public drinking water safe?

Croatian public authorities say current analysis shows that water in the public supply is safe, while environmental monitoring around the illegal waste site continues. This does not mean contamination around the site is insignificant, but it does mean claims that the municipal water system has been poisoned go beyond the evidence currently reported by authorities.

Why did tens of thousands of people protest in Zagreb?

Protesters gathered on September 5 to demand more urgent removal of the waste and greater accountability over the response to the Gospić scandal. The demonstration reflected growing concern about the length of time the material had remained in place and broader distrust surrounding Croatia’s waste-management system.

Is the Gospić pollution scandal an example of ecocide?

It has not been legally established as ecocide, and Croatia’s proposed new ecocide offense cannot simply be applied retrospectively to earlier alleged conduct. The case is relevant to the ecocide debate because it illustrates how organized environmental crime can cause persistent ecological damage, but a legal ecocide determination would require the specific threshold established by the applicable law.

How does this relate to the EU Environmental Crime Directive?

The European Union has strengthened its criminal framework for serious environmental offenses, requiring member states to improve penalties, enforcement and corporate accountability. Gospić illustrates why cross-border environmental criminal law matters because the alleged operation involved waste originating in several European countries before environmental harm became concentrated in Croatia.

What happens next in Gospić?

Croatian authorities say remediation is moving forward through several procurement and cleanup processes, with physical work expected to begin in stages. The longer-term challenge will be to remove or safely manage the waste while continuing environmental monitoring, completing the criminal investigation and identifying how similar cross-border waste crime can be prevented in future.