• Civil Guard. A smuggling network of polluting gases in Valencia

Maybe the name R-22 doesn't say anything to most people. It may sound like a robot but, nevertheless, it is a gas that until a few years ago was present in many houses; today instead, it is a beloved smuggled object. It is a fluorinated refrigerant gas, one of the gases used in objects as common as air conditioners, refrigerators, aerosols, etc.

But R-22 has been clandestine since 2015 throughout the EU, because its use and trade are prohibited. Its composition destroys the ozone layer and has a serious influence on the greenhouse effect. So much, that emitting a single kilo of these gases is the same as sending 1,700 kilos of CO2 to the sky. However, it has a great advantage over its legal competitors: it is three times cheaper than the gases whose use is allowed.

That is why there is a black market against which police from all over Europe fight . Already since the Montreal Protocol of 1997, all signatory countries have made a commitment to combat the smuggling of these harmful gases into the atmosphere. And precisely the investigation against its illegal traffic has earned the Civil Guard Seprona and the Office of the Environment Prosecutor a few weeks ago a prize from the United Nations Environment Program.

Of the operations carried out in recent times against the illicit traffic of these gases, perhaps the most prominent is the so-called Malvarma, which was known this past spring.

This operation and similar ones have revealed that the main black market for fluorinated gases is in the R-22, although there are other types that are also used in smuggling. R-22 belongs to the family of hydrochlorofluorocarbons, or HCFCs.

The disjointed band in Malvarma was made up of 10 people who basically dedicated themselves to illegally exporting R-22 to Panama, often using France as a previous platform to make the leap to Central America.

"The high cooling power of the R-22 makes it very attractive in hot countries such as Panama," they explain from Seprona, and this adds to its low price and, sometimes, that there are destinations where environmental regulations have not prohibited it, or Well your controls are much more lax.

In the Malvarma operation, Seprona discovered that a Valencian company was hiding its duty to inform the European Commission about the stock of R-22 it had. The criminal organization, in which 10 people were involved, had an obligation to destroy it through a hazardous waste management company, but instead they sent it to France and then smuggled it into Panama.

Only in this operation were 10 tons of that gas intervened , which doing the equivalence could have meant the same as sending 17 million kilos of CO2 to the atmosphere . The economic benefit was around one million euros, according to the Civil Guard.

“In Malvarma, the approach to irregular management and illegal traffic of R-22 refrigerant gas is twofold. If we consider gas as waste, its irregular management entails an ecological crime, with penalties of up to two years in prison. His smuggled into Panama in contravention of the European Regulation 1005/2009 on substances that deplete the ozone layer, on the other hand involves the commission of a crime of catastrophic risk up to three years in prison "he told this newspaper the captain of the Seprona Miguel Mendez

150 tons seizures

The work against the traffic of these gases takes years and demonstrates that, despite its prohibition, the passage of time is only gradually reducing smuggling, but there is still a lot.

Far, however, there are huge apprehensions such as that of the Refresco operation, in 2012, when Seprona himself investigated 96 people and seized 150 tons of R-22. On that occasion, the traffic of the gigantic cylinders was carried out between Zaragoza and the Canary Islands, and the investigation earned him in 2014 to gain for the first time the recognition of the UN to the Seprona and the Environment Prosecutor.

Like other times, the main destination of the R-22 of the Refresco operation was the fishing vessels, which use that gas in their gigantic cold rooms. Although the use of this gas is prohibited, the normative labyrinth that surrounds the flags of the ships is used to avoid the prohibitions, and ships with the teachings of countries that did not sign the Montreal Protocol for more than 20 years ago are used.

Thus, in 2016 the UN recognized the work of the Office of the Prosecutor and Civil Guard again, after an investigation that detected that fishing vessels were again recipients of that illegal gas. During that case, twenty companies were investigated in the so-called Xiada operation, which ended with 37 tons of R-22 required.

What are fluorinated gases?

The so-called fluorinated greenhouse gases have a great capacity to heat the atmosphere. They began to be used in the 1990s to replace the gases responsible for the destruction of the ozone layer called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrofluorochlorocarbons (HCFCs). These chemical compounds that were ending the ozone layer were present in many daily use aerosols such as deodorants, air fresheners, insecticides and cleaning products, as well as in refrigerators or air conditioners.

It was in 1985 when a large hole over Antarctica was observed with concern, which revealed that the stratosphere's ozone layer (about 20 kilometers from the Earth's surface) was slowly decreasing. The ozone layer is important because it protects us from the most harmful ultraviolet rays by preventing them from passing through the atmosphere. It was also found that they took time to reach the atmosphere so their effect persists for decades. They are currently very regulated.

Since scientists identified these substances as the culprits in the decrease in the ozone layer, the use of fluorinated greenhouse gases has been increasing. Although they also have an environmental impact, their effect on the ozone layer is much less than that of CFCs.

Among the fluorinated gases that replaced CFCs, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) stand out. They have many industrial applications. They are used primarily to manufacture refrigeration and air conditioning equipment, aerosols, solvents, thermal insulation and electrical insulation foams and in firefighting.

Due to its impact on the climate, both European and Spanish regulations have developed a series of measures to try to reduce emissions of these gases through taxes and the incentive of new alternative technologies.

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