High price of olive oil leads to increased fraud: ASAE warns of increasing criminal networks in Portugal
ASAE opened 54 criminal proceedings and 30 related administrative offences due to fraud in the olive oil sector until the end of October this year, which, according to ‘CNN Portugal’, is due to the price increase. “Most of them are related to fraud in the product itself”, indicated the inspector general Luís Lourenço. “If there is a greater possibility of economic gain, it is normal that there is a tendency for there to be more cases of fraud.”
There are an increasing number of criminal networks operating in Portugal, which has led the Food and Economic Safety Authority to make olive oil one of its top priorities for investigation this year, having even sent teams from other projects to investigate supply chains. “This year, we have seen this increase, we have already registered around ten more criminal proceedings compared to last year”, said the official – in the European Union, the number of cases has soared: in the first three months of the year, there were 50 infractions, three times the number recorded in the same period in 2018, when the price began to rise.
Counterfeiting networks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the official pointed out. “It is not possible to commit this type of crime individually, because the product has to go through several stages. A large part of the chain has to be aware of it,” he said, arguing that frauds involve lower quality products. “The issue is the remaining product, which may not be of such high quality, and in this case, there has to be a network that makes this type of change.”
ASAE seized at least 350 thousand euros in operations related to olive oil fraud, which became widespread in the falsification of labels, which brought great economic advantages to criminal networks when the price of olive oil reached substantially high levels. “In previous years, there was no economic advantage in producing this type of label, so they did not appear on the market, which brings a new complexity in terms of investigation. We need to investigate the entire chain”, highlighted Luís Gonçalves. “We also found false mentions of organic production, misleading consumers into buying products that do not correspond to what is promised.”
Throughout the year, ASAE seized nearly 100,000 litres of counterfeit cooking oil and olive oil, and closed at least five establishments, having seized more than 350,000 euros related to fraudulent practices in the olive oil sector. “This increase in prices, combined with the lack of the product itself, smaller productions and the market itself working, led us to take greater action”, said the inspector general. “ASAE’s intervention was aimed at ensuring the quality of the national product, and maintaining this quality so that there is no distrust in the market.”