Brussels, 14/01/2008 (Agence Europe) - The Magistrates Court in Créteil (France) has imposed suspended prison sentences on the managers of a dairy company found guilty of selling products manufactured using adulterated butter, the European Commission has announced in a press release. The defendants will also have to pay back over €23 million. The Créteil Court judgment is still subject to appeal; the principle of presumption of innocence still applies, therefore.
The judgment is the result of an international investigation, in which the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) played an active part, to uncover and prosecute offences involving the production and distribution of adulterated butter on the European market. On 24 October 2007, the European Parliament raised questions over the slowness of legal proceedings against the Franco-Italo-Belgian network, which produced and marketed 16,000 tonnes of adulterated butter (comprising beef suet and fats used in the cosmetics industry, see EUROPE 9296).
According to the decision delivered by the Créteil Magistrates Court on 22 November 2007, the defendants were sentenced to imprisonment of eight months and five months respectively for selling goods under false pretences. Both sentences were suspended. They will also have pay back over €23 million in unlawfully obtained European subsidies to the French Office for Livestock (Office de l'Elevage, formerly Onilait - Office national interprofessionnel du lait). The Office for Livestock applied for repayment of the subsidies received by the dairy company between 1997 and 2000 for products which should not have been designated as butter. The Court, however, acquitted the defendants of the charge of conspiracy to defraud in this case of European subsidy fraud, which involved adulterated industrial butter bought at the end of the 1990s by French firms from Italian companies with links to the world of organised crime.
Criminal proceedings are currently pending in Italy (Naples) and Belgium (Verviers and Veurne). The German authorities have not opened criminal proceedings but have recovered Community subsidies totalling €150 000.
“The judgment shows that fraud with the EU Budget will not go un-punished. This is a great success for OLAF, perseverance and international cooperation pay off,” said Anti-Fraud Commissioner Siim Kallas. (L.C.)