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The Spanish Civil Guard has seized more than 120 tons of fake olive oil, under the oper­a­tion ​‘Cloroil.’

The judi­cial police units of the Civil Guard of Jaén arrested 9 peo­ple and 2 oth­ers are now under inves­ti­ga­tion. Four have crim­i­nal records for ille­gal­i­ties like forgery and fraud against con­sumers. Among them are: Enrique Fuentes Ibáñez, who is already doing time for the ​‘Iniosa’ case (an alleged fraud in which more than 200 olive grow­ers in Jaén and Córdoba deliv­ered their 2001 and 2002 olive har­vests to a com­pany which later declared bank­ruptcy, leav­ing them unpaid); and his son Enrique Fuentes P., also in jail for fis­cal fraud for forgery and belong­ing to a crim­i­nal organization.

According to the Civil Guard web­site, the oper­a­tion was launched when the agents, dur­ing one of their peri­odic meet­ings with agri­cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions, coop­er­a­tives and asso­ci­a­tions of farm­ers, offi­cials were alerted to the pos­si­bil­ity that some com­pa­nies may have been manip­u­lat­ing olive oil with biodiesel, with the inten­tion to dis­trib­ute it on the mar­ket as olive oil. 

The agents set up a device to detect the move­ment of trucks and found that a com­pany based in Jaén was the recip­i­ent of con­sign­ments of sun­flower oil from France, palm oil from Ecuador and avo­cado oil from Greece. They also found that the com­pany was acquir­ing fla­vor­ings and col­orants not needed for its des­ig­nated com­mer­cial activities. 

The Civil Guard, in coor­di­na­tion with the Regional Ministry of Agriculture of the Government of Andalusía, inspected the facil­i­ties and admin­is­tra­tive areas of the com­pany and took sam­ples of olive oils at four other com­pa­nies in Jaén, Granada and Córdoba. They uncov­ered and seized 120 tons of dif­fer­ent oils, thyme and gar­lic fla­vor­ings, 16 per­cent fat-sol­u­ble mag­ne­sium chloro­phyll, and false documents.

The forgery of the trans­port doc­u­ments was allegedly used to avoid the track­ing of sub­stan­dard large con­tain­ers used for the trans­port of oils, which caused a health risk due to the pos­si­ble pres­ence of harm­ful residues. The mix­ture of oils could be harm­ful to those with sen­si­tiv­ity to cer­tain sub­stances and allergens.

One of the pro­ce­dures used to obtain the oil could be to use extracts already used and dis­carded by other man­u­fac­tur­ers, while sun­flower oil had been sub­jected to a refin­ing process and then mixed with palm or avo­cado oil. The final prod­uct was found to be com­prised of only an esti­mated 15 per­cent olive oil.

• El Pais


• Diario Jaén


• Guardia Civil