Albanian prosecutors have ordered the seizure of containers potentially filled with toxic waste from a Turkish cargo ship.

Newsagency AFP said the 1,000-teu Turkish-flagged feeder unit Moliva (built 2014) has brought back boxes that originally left from the Albanian Adriatic port of Durres in July on two other ships bound for Thailand.

Thailand rejected the cargo.

About 100 containers may be filled with electric arc furnace dust, according to information passed by a whistleblower to green group Basel Action Network, which estimates the waste at 2,100 tonnes.

Electric arc furnace dust is classified as toxic waste.

Tests are expected to be carried out on the cargo.

AIS data shows the ship left Gemlik in Turkey on 25 October and arrived on Monday at Durres, where it remained at anchor.

AFP said that when the containers left Albania in the summer, customs documents specified a cargo of iron oxide.

The Durres prosecutor’s office is working with the European Anti-Fraud Office on the case.

‘Must be seized’

Balkan Insight cited the office as saying: “The material must be seized as evidence, with the aim of conducting relevant expertise on 102 containers being transported to Albania on the ship Moliva.”

Basel Action Network director Jim Puckett said: “We are 95% certain that this waste is precisely what the whistleblower said it was all along. And we are 100% certain it should never have been exported to Thailand.

“Now that it’s back, it’s vital that we conduct a full and transparent analysis of the constituents of this waste, learn who generated it, and who is responsible for shipping it without proper packaging and notification, in likely violation of international law.”

The shipment of industrial waste from Western countries for processing in developing countries is worth between €44bn and €70bn ($48bn to $76bn) per year, according to green groups.

Equasis lists the Moliva as operated by Moliva Shipping of Istanbul, which could not be contacted.