`Spanish Olive Oil Sector Outraged by Dropped 'Operation Lucerna' Case - Olive Oil Times
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Spanish Olive Oil Sector Outraged by Dropped 'Operation Lucerna' Case

By Julie Butler
Dec. 11, 2012 16:52 UTC

Lamentable, incom­pre­hen­si­ble, unbe­liev­able, an out­rage.

Those were among the reac­tions from mem­bers of Spain’s olive oil sec­tor to news that crim­i­nal charges will not pro­ceed against 14 peo­ple orig­i­nally alleged to have been part of a scam in which blends of cheaper oils — such as palm and avo­cado oil — were to be passed off as olive oil.

Back in February, Spanish police announced they had arrested 19 peo­ple in the case, which also allegedly involved a com­plex net­work of 30 com­pa­nies and ​‘straw men’ from Spain, Italy and Portugal, and at least €3 mil­lion ($3.9 mil­lion) in sales tax eva­sion.

The arrests fol­lowed a year-long joint probe with Spanish tax author­i­ties, code-named Operation Lucerna, and focused on loca­tions in Jaén and Córdoba.

But ten months later, the pros­e­cu­tor for the case, Juan Muñoz Cuesta, has said that the crim­i­nal com­plaints will not go ahead.

In a copy of an indict­ment doc­u­ment dated November 22, obtained today by Olive Oil Times, Muñoz Cuesta first detailed alle­ga­tions of tax fraud involv­ing var­i­ous of the par­ties, before address­ing the issue of pos­si­ble crim­i­nal offenses relat­ing to the mar­ket or con­sumers.

He said that although blends of oils had been pro­duced in an irreg­u­lar way, and in some cases labels did not coin­cide with con­tain­ers’ con­tents, then unless the prod­ucts were found to endan­ger health — which they were not — they would need to have been offered or adver­tised for sale for an offense to have occurred under the penal code.

However, the oils were found on var­i­ous com­pany premises and had not yet reached the mar­ket.

Furthermore, no com­plaints had been made by aggrieved per­sons and there was no evi­dence of any effect on the gen­eral inter­ests of any per­sons, Muñoz Cuesta explained.

The news met dis­may and incredulity from many olive oil pro­duc­ers. Various com­ments on the Facebook page of the Spanish Association of Municipalities of the Olive Tree (AEMO) said the sit­u­a­tion left a smear on the image of vir­gin olive oil in gen­eral, and Spanish olive oils specif­i­cally.

AEMO spokesman Jose Penco told Olive Oil Times the irony was that olive oil com­pa­nies often insisted that checks of their prod­ucts be done before the olive oil left their premises — not from sam­ples taken at the retail stage — because they can’t con­trol the way it is han­dled after dis­patch.

“Where should inspec­tion take place, then, in order to require account­abil­ity?” he asked.

The sit­u­a­tion left defense­less con­sumers and the vast major­ity of the sec­tor, who did the right thing, he said.

A spokes­woman for the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment (MAGRAMA) said the min­istry, ​“as should be the case, always val­ues the work of the jus­tice sys­tem and and respects it deci­sions.”


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