Her research expertise covers especially analysis of economic crimes, which include also environmental crimes in Finland. Kankaanranta has been project manager in several research projects focusing on environmental crimes; please see e.g. analysis of illicit waste trafficking.

Maria-Pia Karppela is a lawyer and environmental scientist with experience in environmental inspections based on her previous degree. Maria-Pia’s job is focused on advocating environmental crime cases as a representative of the environment’s general interests. She also actively educates officials on administrative and criminal matters. Furthermore Maria-Pia’s special competences include environmental permission monitoring, environmental criminality and administrative processes. Her broad job description includes widely all legal issues related to environmental legislation.

This criminal intelligence and investigation organization is part of the Dutch national EPA (inspectorate for human environment and transport). Long year experience within the organization of EPA as project manager for organizational reform and merger of several government services. Former head of the department for Innovation and process redesign and Head of the policy department.

Worked within the Ministry of transport as a senior policy advisor on new legislation to significantly reduce decision making on infrastructural project in the Netherlands and decision maker for infrastructural road projects. 

As director of the special intelligence and Investigation service responsible for representing the ministry of Environment in the National Environmental Security Taskforce were National coordination and decision making on all large environmental investigations takes place together with representatives of national prosecutors office on environmental crime, environmental crime departments of Dutch national police and special intelligence and investigation service on food and health safety and wildlife.

The Subject of the presentation
Bio diesel fraud and the negative impact on reaching our climate goals

The Netherlands is one of the bigger biodiesel producers in de EU. Sustainable biodiesel is of great importance for reaching our climate goals looking at 2030 en onwards. Based on several investigation cases with estimated criminal proceeds of crime that sometimes exceed 100 million euro this presentation will give you in depth insight in de modus operandi of the fraud schemes and the impact they have on the environment 

Riku Lindqvist is a national coordinator for environmental crime and an expert on environmental crime prevention. He is a member of the implementation working group of Strategy for the Environmental Crime Prevention and Secretary of Finnish Environmental Crime Monitoring Group. The Environmental Crime Monitoring Group prepares an annual update on environmental crime in Finland. You can order reports at [email protected]

Introduction to the Pretrial Investigation of Environmental Crimes in Finland and Best Practices in Investigating Environmental Crimes

Environmental crimes are often driven by financial savings, and in Finland environmental crimes are classified as part of financial crime. The situation of environmental crime in Finland has remained statistically almost the same for several years. However, it is estimated that there is much more environmental crime in Finland than is known to the authorities. With scarce resources, exposing environmental crime requires effective cooperation between authorities and effective operating models. 

Heidi Nummela has been working as a prosecutor more than 20 years and the last 15 years specializing to environmental crimes. The level of her qualification is Licentiate of Laws. She has also worked in many working groups regarding environmental crimes and is also a member in several domestic and foreign environmental crime networks.

Katie Olley is a specialist in waste shipments for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. She is also the current chair of the ENFORCE Network (Environmental Network for Optimizing Regulatory Compliance on Illegal Traffic) and represents Western Europe and Other countries. She is the Project Leader for IMPEL’s EU Life-funded Shipments of Waste Enforcement Actions Project. Before becoming a regulator, Katie worked for the Dutch waste industry, lobbying on European legislation with FEAD (the European Waste Management Association) and CEWEP (the Confederation of European Waste to Energy Plants).

Mario Pellegrino is a Lieutenant Colonel of Italian Carabinieri. He is currently working in the field of law enforcement cooperation in order to facilitate and to support investigations among EU Member States.

He deals mainly with investigations focused on waste and pollution crimes. He has a background as investigator and as an expert on international cooperation (He was involved for three years in Operations in The Balkans, Afghanistan, Israel/Gaza and Tunisia, mainly under the framework of the European External Action Service).

The Subject of the presentation

The presentation will focus on three main points: an overview of the most relevant environmental crimes at EU level; the support that Europol can offer to the investigators; concrete cases of accomplished investigations. 
 

Minna Risk is currently leading a centralized investigative unit in Häme Police Department, including an economic and fraud criminal unit. This unit is also investigating environmental crime.

Christian Tournié is the Driver of the Environmental Crime of the European multidisciplinary platform against criminal threats (EMPACT) of the EU policy cycle on international organised crime (2018-2021). He has been a Vice Chair of the EU Law Enforcement Environmental Crime Network (EnviCrimeNet) after being the chair in 2018. He also participates in the work of the UNODC to take into account crimes that affect the environment, such as the Palermo resolution adopted in October 2020.

The Subject of the presentation

This presentation will focus on an assessment of the first three years of implementation of the "environmental crime" priority of the 2018-2021 policy cycle to combat international crime.
 

Reeta Vestman is an established Finnish actor, singer, musician and vocal coach. She has starred as a leading lady in musicals and plays such as The Sound of Music, Evita, Saturday Night Fever, Purge, Pride and Prejudice, Something Rotten, Honeymoon in Vegas, The Rocky Horror Show and Kalevala (Off-Broadway) and on screen including Forest Giant, Class Reunion 3 and Nurses. Reeta was trained internationally graduating from The Royal Academy of Music in London (PG Dip in Musical Theatre) and Sibelius Academy in Helsinki (Master of Music). Reeta is also known for her former pop group Husky Rescue, with whom she has released critically acclaimed albums and toured the US, Europe and Asia. She has also performed as the Guard’s  Combo’s soloist at the Finnish Independence Day Reception for the president of Finland and over 2,7 million tv-viewers.  Currently Reeta teaches musical theatre at the University of Arts in Helsinki and plays the cover Meg Giri in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies at the Finnish National Opera.