Fayed Afram fined $460,000 after illegally dumping asbestos

The former director of a company paid $4 million to safely remove asbestos from a Green Square development site has been fined for illegally dumping material on rural properties.

The former director of a company paid $4 million to safely remove asbestos from a development site at Green Square has been fined for illegally dumping it before creating a fake paper trail.

Fayed Afram, also known as Fred Fram and Faid Fram is the former director of SSADCO Contractors, now unregistered, pleaded guilty to four charges in the Land and Environment Court of NSW in April.

Afram took 17,600 tonnes of asbestos contaminated waste from a Green Square development site and organised for it to be trucked to a site in the Central Coast and a second Horsley Park site in Sydney’s southwest.

He was fined $460,000 for three charges relating to supplying false or misleading information in a material respect about waste in the course of removal of building and demolition material, and one charge of land pollution.

Afram had already been convicted of fraud in June 2021 but the Land and Environment Court case revealed a second dumping site in Horsley Park.

Fayed Afram was first charged by police in 2018, as a Kemps Creek property was searched.

Afram, aged 51, fled to Australia in 1990 after the Lebanese Civil War in which he served with the Lebanese Christian Forces between 1988 and 1989, according to an affidavit supplied in court.

SSADCO Contractors (SSADCO) collected asbestos-contaminated waste from a Green Square development site under contract with construction business Ertech, and was supposed to take it to designated facilities in Kemps Creek and Bowral.

SSADCO was paid $4.2 million by Ertech for the job, with $2.39 million to be paid to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a waste levy.

Instead, the asbestos-contaminated waste was dumped on a privately owned semirural property in Kulnura — where Afram was supposed to be building a road and filling in land for the owners — and a property in Horsley Park.

84-98 Truman Road, Horsley Park is a residential area. Picture: Google Maps

At 84-98 Truman Rd, Horsley Park, 18,500 to 21,500 cubic metres of fill material was deposited across 12,200 sqm.

At Cherry Ln, Kulnura, more than 10 tonnes of asbestos waste was found with about 11,530 tonnes of waste dumped.

At both sites, the dumped materials posed a real risk to human health and the environment, exacerbated by the fact families lived on the properties.

Testing in Kulnura showed the environment had already started to degrade and alter after the dumping, both physically and chemically.

Some of the Green Square development site waste is still unaccounted for, with SSADCO originally contracted to remove 17,600 tonnes of material.

At the Kulnura site, only four of the 11 tonnes of waste came from Green Square, while the Horsley Park site had even less waste.

Faking the disposal of the asbestos materials involved a hugely co-ordinated effort.

The CaseLaw decision noted it included the production of more than 600 counterfeit waste disposal dockets, organising 50 different trucks, and co-ordinating more than 600 individual movements.

During a search on a rural Kemps Creek property police seized documents, computers and a quad dog trailer, shortly before Afram was charged. Picture: NSW Police

Truck drivers were moving between Green Square and Kulnura with up to three trips a day, taking waste from the development site and using it to fill land in Kulnura.

Afram has already been convicted of fraud for the asbestos-dumping scheme, and was given a two-year intensive corrections order on June 24, 2021 in the NSW District court.

In pleading guilty to the Land and Environment Court, Afram’s lawyer argued he was a man short on money, showing a single bank statement with one account that held $608.

In addition, Afram was receiving Centrelink support, including a carer’s payment of $1,361.10 a fortnight, with his lawyer making the claim that as a means-tested payment, it was proof that Afram was not able to pay a large fine.

The presiding judge, Justice Nicola Hope Margaret Pain, was not convinced.

“The information supplied by the defendant concerning his financial affairs is quite inadequate, consisting of bank account statements for one account,” Justice Pain said.

“No statement of assets is provided. No tax returns have been provided.”

Afram was fined $240,000 for the offences, and ordered to pay legal costs of $95,000 and investigation expenses of $125,001, bringing his total costs to $460,000.

Ertech, the company which originally contracted SSADCO, declined to comment on the proceedings.