By Pratap Chatterjee
MIAMI, Feb 19 1997 (IPS)

Casey Raja and Roland Wood used to work about a dozen blocks apart in the northern part of this city, selling freon to refrigerator and car repair shops and other small businesses.

Not any more. Raja is to go to jail this month for one year. He will also pay a 100,000-dollar fine for breaking international environmental law. Wood is to answer similar charges in a federal court May 12.

The charges centre on the purchase of freon — the most commonly used chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) — outside the United States, then its illegal re-sale in the country.

CFCs, halons, and other chlorine-based chemicals, which are used primarily as refrigerants and solvents for computers and other hi-tech equipment, have been on a blacklist since the 1980s when scientists concluded that they were wafting up into the stratosphere and breaking down the layer of ozone which protects the earth from the sun’s cancer-causing ultra-violet radiation.

An international agreement, the Montreal Protocol, sets a timetable for a virtual global phase-out of CFCs and similar ozone- destroying chemicals by the year 2010. Under amendments to the 1987 accord, CFCs have been banned from import or production for domestic use in the United States and other industrialised nations since January last year.

But use of the chemicals that had been legally stockpiled in the United States is not banned.

In the meantime, illegal imports into the United States have risen dramatically. A decline in supplies has also caused the price of a 13.5-kilogramme cylinder of CFCs here to skyrocket to 500 dollars. Outside of the United States, a cylinder typically sells for less than 35 dollars.

The temptation to make a quick buck on this price differential has proved irresistible to many.

“We believe that a number of individuals capitalised on the windfall profits without paying the taxes,” says Tom Watts- Fitzgerald, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Raja and is now pressing charges against Wood.

Both men ran their freon businesses out of nondescript warehouses on the narrow strip that separates the I-95 interstate highway from Northwest Seventh Avenue in a poor inner city neighbourhood here.

Set among chain stores and small retail shops, the businesses kept a low profile. Only their own customers realise that the two men face trouble.

Right behind the triangular warehouse Wood used to store his freon is the showroom for a second-hand store called Appliance Headquarters. Paul Manno, who runs the store with his brother Michael, walks past newly repaired refrigerators, to the back where he pulls out a set of invoices.

He alleges that Wood sold him a cylinder of freon in 1992 for 125 dollars, but that by 1993, the price for a cylinder was 210 dollars.”Today, it can cost as much as 900 dollars a cylinder if you want to buy just one or two,” Manno told IPS.

Wood continues to sell freon, but his sales agents say they have no immediate plans to market the product in the United States.

About a dozen blocks south of Appliance Headquarters, Raja still runs a restaurant equipment supply business.

Hy Schapiro, Raja’s lawyer, declined to comment on the conviction. “I have a policy not to speak to the media until it’s over. And it’s not over, until it’s over,” he said.

Jim Valette, an environmental investigator for the Washington- based Ozone Action, says that smugglers of freon usually buy their goods in countries like China, India, and Russia and then ship the cylinders via Britain and the United States to a Latin American or Caribbean destination.

When the cylinders arrive in Miami, they are tagged to travel by rail to New York to be shipped out of the country. But in fact, many containers are simply rerouted to local warehouses in Miami, and the contents sold at a vast profit in the country.

In the last three years, government investigations have resulted in the seizure of some 680 tons of CFCs. The hauls have slowed to a trickle in recent months, but customs officials say this may simply reflect a change in routing. Officials are now focussing their attention on destinations like California and Texas.

Valette has mixed opinions about the customs strategy.

“It’s great that the U.S. government is going after the black market in CFCs,” he said. “But it would be even better if the government were to pursue the source — the string of CFC factories which continue to produce worldwide.”

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