Fake oil sellers trial set to conclude

The trial is expected to conclude today, which has been held since Monday in the National Court, against four people accused of fraud in the sale of oil that they labelled as Extra Virgin Olive Oil from the province of Jaén. In reality, almost 70% of the product was sunflower oil and the rest was olive oil of a lower category. The oil was sold between 2017 and 2018 in the Córdoba municipalities of La Carlota and La Guijarrosa.

In the indictment of the Prosecutor’s Office, each of the accused is facing 3 years in prison for an alleged crime of forgery in a commercial document. Another three for crimes against industrial property. And seven more for a continued crime of fraud. That is, 13 years in prison plus the obligation to compensate those harmed by this fraud.

To give credibility to the scam, the defendants had created a false commercial brand — Belum Olei —, which they also passed off as part of a Jaén cooperative of which they were not actually part. In addition to this, they bought bottles from the Carrasqueño cooperative in Alcaudete (Jaén), which they emptied and filled with the fake Extra Virgin oil, in order to market it again. They did it with instrumental companies, details the Public Ministry, which estimates that the accused acquired nearly 74,000 litres of extra virgin olive oil from the cooperative to carry out this adulteration process.

The four defendants were arrested on February 23, 2018 in an operation by the Guardia Civil, which located an industrial warehouse in the Córdoba municipality of Aguilar de la Frontera as the centre of operations for the plot. There, the agents seized 1,134 empty 5-litre jugs, with falsified labels. That same day, the release of these four people was ordered.

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