Precautionary measures for seven people: eight important companies operating in the trade of organic products seized.
Since the early hours of this morning, financial police from the Caserta Provincial Command and inspectors from the Central Investigation Unit of the ICQRF of the Ministry of Agriculture have been executing a precautionary measure order, issued by the GIP at the Court of Santa Maria Capua Vetere at the request of the Public Prosecutor's Office, against seven individuals.
All investigated for the crimes of criminal association aimed at ideological forgery and aggravated commercial fraud, for having marketed in the period between 2016 and 2022 large quantities of agri-food products falsely declared as organic.
The precautionary measures being implemented include the temporary ban on carrying out business activities for 12 months and the simultaneous ban on residing in the province of Caserta for entrepreneurs in the agri-food sector at the top.
of five important companies operating in the trade of organic farming products.
The investigative activities conducted by the Central Investigation Unit of the ICQRF and the PEF Unit of the Guardia di Finanza of Caserta have allowed the Judicial Authority to reveal a complex and ramified fraud system involving a Caserta entrepreneur who owns two processing companies with a turnover of more than 20 million euros per year and an agricultural company specialized in the production of organic fruit and vegetables.
As well as another entrepreneur from Catania who owns a company specializing in the import and export of almonds and dried fruit in general and a third entrepreneur operating in the province of Cuneo who owns an important company importing and exporting almonds, dried fruit in general and tomato preserves.
The organized criminal group, through a significant number of compliant agricultural, processing and cooperative companies operating mainly in Puglia, Calabria and Lazio who provided false invoices to justify the purchase of almonds and tomatoes declared as organic, placed on the market large quantities of non-organic almonds, as they came from abroad, including the State of California, and tomatoes obtained from conventional agriculture, passing off the products as certified organic.
Thanks to the support of the “shell” companies, the criminal association was able to enjoy an apparent documentary cover that allowed it to conceal the true fraudulent nature of the entrepreneurial action by placing on the market almonds and tomato preserves often contaminated with chemical substances not permitted in organic farming, or in any case obtained without any guarantee of origin and provenance of the product and the production process.
However, thanks to the control of national and foreign authorities, it was possible to start the investigative activity following the communication of the crime report filed by the Central Investigation Unit of the ICQRF, on the basis of the first findings from the intra-community communications of the OFIS (Organic Farming Information System) system which allowed to draw attention to the phenomenon and the subjects connected to it.
In particular, reports of irregularities arrived (following analyses carried out on the products marketed by the companies under investigation) from the control authorities of Germany and the Netherlands and subsequently also from France, Austria, Spain, Denmark and Belgium.
The subsequent investigation phases have also allowed to reveal the economic-financial nature of the crimes for which the military of the PEF Nucleus of the Guardia di Finanza of Caserta have deepened the relationships between the companies involved in the fraud system. In this sense, the synergy between the investigative bodies has allowed to attack the organized criminal group on both fronts, both the one related to food fraud and the economic-financial one.
Search and seizure activities are underway against the seven individuals subject to personal measures and eight companies, aimed at finding further elements attributable to the ascertained conduct, as well as specific traceability activities of the marketed products in order to identify the actual quantity of irregular product placed on the market.
Furthermore, the acquisition of documents was also ordered from the laboratories that carried out the internal analyses on the fake organic products on behalf of the companies of the associated subjects as well as from a banking institution and from CONSOB in order to shed light on the nature of some capital from which the organised group would have benefited in order to finance the fraudulent commercial operation.
Article published on 28 February 2023 - 14:06
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