Corrupt council staff were taking cash bribes from the boss of a skip firm to allow him to cheaply dump waste at a local authority recycling centre, a court has heard. The employees were given cash backhanders by the waste firm's owner totalling around £1,700 a week in return for under-weighing loads he was delivering and for mis-recording expensive mixed waste as simple loads of rubble and hardcore. The scam came to a light when a whistle-blower alerted his bosses. Three of those at the heart of the bribery conspiracy had been jailed while another two have been handed suspended prison sentences.
Mark Cotter KC, prosecuting, told Swansea Crown Court that the bribery operation was centred on Cardiff Council's Bessemer Close recycling centre. One of the major commercial users of the Leckwith site was a skip firm operating under the name A&T which would deposit loads of waste on a regular basis and sometimes several times daily. The prosecutor said the boss of the skip firm, Warren Roberts, entered into a criminal arrangement with four employees of the council – Cesario Deabreu, Andrew Barnett, Anthony Miles, and Joshua Hayman – in order to reduce the amount he was being charged for taking waste to the site. This agreement included falsely recording loads of "mixed waste" – which requires significant amount of work to sort and process and which therefore attracts a much higher charge – as simple loads of rubble which have a much lower charge to handle.
The court heard while straightforward loads of rubble or hardcore cost £30 per tonne to dump, the fees for mixed waste are at least four times that. As well as mis-recording and charging the types of waste coming into the site the conspiracy also involved manually altering the results from the centre's weighbridge to under-weigh A&T lorries, and also simply not recording some deliveries at all.
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The court heard that as a result of the conspiracy A&T was "massively undercharged" for using the Bessemer Close site – money that went straight into Roberts' pocket. He was described by the prosecutor as the "instigator" of the bribery conspiracy. The council staff were given cash payments by Roberts with a "weekly pot" of around £1,700 being handed over to be divided up among the employees involved in the scam.
The court heard each member of staff had a different role in the conspiracy. Deabreu was a weighbridge operator at the Bessemer site and was in daily text and WhatsApp contact with Roberts to coordinate the arrival of the skips and their onward processing. He would also update Roberts about any issues at the site that may affect their operation. Deabreu was also the one who was given the cash by Roberts for onward distribution to colleagues. Andrew Barnett had a supervisory role at the council's Lamby Way recycling centre in Rumney and as such was privy to managerial discussions about the workings of the sites. He had inside knowledge of any issues that could affect their waste scam and he was able to feed back information to Roberts and Deabreu to help them avoid detection. The prosecutor said though it was hard to be precise about figures it is believed Deabreu and Barnett were each taking a £500 cut from the weekly bribery pot.
The other two council employees played lesser roles in the conspiracy. Miles' job was to sort incoming waste at the site and then move it around to the appropriate bays. The court heard he knew the skips did not contain what they were supposed to but was trusted to sort the waste and "to turn a blind eye" to what was going on. Hayman was an agency worker who provided cover at the weighbridge and he was "recruited into the conspiracy and directed by others".
The court heard the conspiracy started in November 2016 came to an end 14 months later when a whistleblower called Mr Hill who worked at the Lamby Way site reported his concerns to bosses. Council investigators began to examine the computerised weighbridge system – known as Gatehouse – and compared what was recorded with CCTV footage. The prosecutor said the investigation found on numerous occasions the electronic read-outs of weight for A&T lorries had been manually overridden and lowered resulting in lower fees charged to the firm. Police were then contacted and after the defendants were arrested their phones were seized and analysed.
Warren Roberts, aged 56, of Birchwood Road, Penylan, Cardiff; Cesario Deabreu, aged 35, of Hill Rise, Llanedeyrn, Cardiff; Anthony Miles, aged 57, of Llwyn Passat, Penarth, Cardiff; and 33-year-old Joshua Hayman, of Vale View, Tredegar, had all previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery when they appeared in the dock for sentencing. Their guilty pleas had been entered at different points in the proceedings. Andrew Barnett, aged 55, of Hasting Close, Penarth, Cardiff, had previously been convicted at trial of the same offence when he appeared alongside his co-accused.
Edward Mitchard, for Roberts, said the defendant fully accepted his wrongdoing and had pleaded guilty at the earliest possible opportunity. He said Roberts was a family man who had been through "a very difficult period" in recent times following the death of a colleague – an inquest into that incident is due to be held in the New Year but the advocate said the defendant had been absolved of any blame following an investigation – and the death of his brother who had jointly run A&T but who played no part in the offending. Mr Mitchard said Roberts now works for a taxi chauffer business.
Gareth Williams, for Deabreu, said the defendant felt "shame and disappointment" in himself and, looking back, hugely regrets that he did not put a stop to matters. He said the defendant was a dad to two young children who now ran his own property maintenance business, and had had the stress and anxiety of the case hanging over him for years.
Andrew Taylor, for Barnett, said the defendant was not just of previously good character but of "exemplary character" and he said it was noteworthy that among the eight personal references handed to the court were two from police officers including one "very senior police officer". He said his client had worked for the council for more than 22 years and on the day the jury returned its verdict his good name, his job and his pension had all "evaporated". The barrister added that Cardiff Council had known something was going on in waste management but "did precious little" to investigate it and he said whatever was going on the "genesis of the dishonesty" was not at Bessemer Close.
Paul Hewitt, for Miles, said the defendant's offending had been one of "omission not commission" and his role had simply been not to complain. He said they were his instructions that Miles had no real understanding of the scale of operation and would receive "low tips" of £20 or £50 a time. The barrister said Miles acted as a carer for his long-term partner and was also in employment, a job which would continue if he were to keep his liberty. John Ryan, for Hayman, said the defendant had two young children and he invited the court to pull back from imposing an immediate sentence. All the advocates raised the issue of the delay in the case – the defendants were all initially arrested on Valentine's Day 2018 – and invited the judge to take that into consideration when reaching sentence.
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Judge Huw Rees said each of the defendants was guilty of offence of conspiracy to commit bribery, a serious offence which carried a maximum sentence to 10 years in prison. The judge noted it had taken four years from the point of arrest to the men being charged via postal requisition in February 2022 and said that delay would result in an "appreciable" reduction in the sentences that otherwise were due.
With a one-third discount for his guilty plea Roberts was sentenced to 28 months in prison while with a one-quarter discount for his guilty plea Deabreu was sentenced to 22 months in prison. Barnett – who was convicted at trial and so received no credit for a guilty plea – was sentenced to 18 moths in prison. The defendants will each serve up to half those sentences in custody before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community.
With a 10% discount for his guilty plea Miles was sentenced to 14 months in prison suspended for 12 months and was ordered to complete 150 hours of unpaid work. With a one-quarter discount for his guilty plea Hayman was sentenced to nine months in prison suspended for 12 months and must complete 120 hours of unpaid work.
Speaking after the sentencing a spokesman for Cardiff Council said: "This was a serious fraud which saw three council employees that no longer work for Cardiff Council, and an agency worker, conspire with an external client for personal gain and to defraud the council. Now that the court case is over and reporting restrictions have ended the council can confirm that we alerted the police and have done everything that we could to aid the investigation." The spokesman added that the local authority had already "strengthened internal controls in this area" and would now carry out a review to see what actions "might further enhance our process for tackling fraud".
Alistair Dickson of the Crown Prosecution Service's serious economic organised and international directorate said bribery of officials damages public trust in the system of local government and undermines council finances. He said waste management was an important council service used to protect the local environment and "should not be manipulated by customers and council employees for criminal gain".
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