The Guardia Civil, in the so-called “Pacquiao” operation, has investigated 22 natural persons and 8 legal entities for fraud in the collection of subsidies from the European Union, linked to animal health and welfare.
The investigations began in June 2022, when investigators discovered the existence of a plot that would falsify the necessary conditions for the illicit obtaining of a series of aid from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), allegedly in connivance with administration personnel belonging to the Junta de Castilla y León, specifically the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development.
The purpose of this aid is to support the income of farmers and ranchers in order to make agriculture profitable and guarantee the production of safe food. The rights to this aid are granted by the competent regional administration and must involve land and an activity to be carried out on that land.
Specifically, the aid analysed in this operation was granted by virtue of grazing with slaughter animals (intended for human consumption) in pastures assigned to each applicant.
The ranchers investigated requested the help of the PAC by simulating the carrying out of this grazing in different territories located in the province of Palencia. The aforementioned ranchers owned intensive cattle farms, whose purpose was to fatten the animals in the shortest possible time, so these animals never managed to graze on the lands that were the subject of aid.
The ranchers involved received an illegal annual amount of around 45,000 euro per rancher, for pretending to graze on land when, in reality, the cattle never left the intensive farms.
It has also been demonstrated that the pastures for which CAP aid was received were illegally reassigned to ranchers in southern Spain, who had livestock for slaughter that they moved to the aforementioned pastures to carry out transhumance.
In this way, a double illicit benefit was obtained from the pastures, which were documentary attributed to the ranchers applying for the CAP, to receive the aid, but were actually used by other ranchers who had to pay for their use.
This fraud was headed by the head of the Regional Agrarian Section (SAC), who was in charge, in person, of validating and managing the different fraudulent files and ignored the warnings of his administration’s technicians.
It coincides that the veterinarian in charge of inspecting the livestock was the sentimental partner of the aforementioned head of the SAC, who did not carry out any field inspection, in the period during which the investigated crimes were committed, despite the existence of a multitude of risky conditions.
In addition, the President of the Neighbourhood Council, brother of the head of the SAC, issued certificates of use of fraudulent pastures (mandatory official document for applying for aid).
On the other hand, a series of people related on a personal level to the figure of the head of the SAC and linked to an association for the defence of livestock farmers, were in charge of obtaining the livestock farmers requesting aid, in different provinces, carrying out first-hand the necessary procedures for the ranchers to obtain the illicit benefit.
It is estimated that the economic benefit obtained would be around one million euro and the property investigation carried out in parallel has culminated in the creation of a judicial inventory made up of 96 properties, which have been frozen to those investigated for a value greater than four million euro, with the objective of facing the financial responsibilities derived from the commission of crimes.
Those investigated are accused of several crimes of subsidy fraud, administrative prevarication, document falsification and fraud.
Irregularities have been detected in the collection of these subsidies by ranchers in the provinces of Palencia, Zamora, Valladolid, Segovia, Ávila, Salamanca and Cantabria.
This Operation, the first carried out by a SEPRONA unit with the European Prosecutor’s Office, has been developed by the Central Operational Unit for the Environment (UCOMA). The Organic Unit of the Judicial Police of Palencia has collaborated in it.
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