Brussels, 27/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - A total of 26 arrests have been made across Europe in an operation, largely in France and Belgium, against a criminal ring involved in the trade in illegal horsemeat, Eurojust, the EU's judicial cooperation unit, announced in a press release on Saturday 25 April. Those arrested are suspected of belonging to an “organised criminal network” which falsified horse health documentation - passports - so that “the horsemeat, deemed unfit for human consumption, was able to fraudulently enter the European food chain”.
French authorities estimate that, between 2010 and 2013, 4,700 horses unfit for human consumption were slaughtered and introduced into the legal food chain. “Four hundred horse passports with anomalies were detected in France alone”, Eurojust says, indicating that an investigation had been started by the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Marseille in 2013.
Dutch investigators carried out some 15 searches and arrested three people “at the request of the French authorities”, which have applied for their extradition. The operation, carried out on Friday in France, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the UK, seized €37,000 in cash, medicines and 800 horse passports. More than 200 horses will be examined by veterinary services, Eurojust revealed.
“Cooperation worked well as seven member states were involved in this operation”, the European Commission noted on Monday 27 April (our translation). (Solenn Paulic)