The Civil Guard of Calp has carried out an extensive and laborious investigation, in which thousands of agricultural documents have been analyzed and which has concluded with the imputation of 58 people by 45 crimes of falsification of private document and 3 crimes of falsification of document trade.
The investigation began in Calp in June of last year 2018, under the framework of Plan Against Theft in Agricultural and Livestock Farms, making it coincide, in addition, with the citrus harvesting campaign, so present in the area.
Thanks to this operation, which concluded in April of the 2019, it has been possible to detect the existence of hundreds of falsified DATA documents (Tracking and Traceability Document) or, at least, with certain irregularities.
What is the DATA
The DATA is a document that becomes mandatory as of the entry into force of the 11 / 2013 Order of the Ministry of the Presidency of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and Water. The purpose of this document is to provide traceability to the products of the field, being mandatory for each product that exceeds the 20 kg in weight, provided that it is not the owner of the same who carries it at that time.
This document is made up of a series of fields to be completed by the owner of the land and which includes data on the owner's affiliation, location of the land (plot, site and plot) in which the collection is carried out, identification of the transporters / collectors, amount of estimated production, destination of the fruit, date of collection and signature of the owner.
Irregular documentation
After numerous periodic inspections in the various citrus grocery stores in the province of Alicante and, after the analysis of thousands of DATA documents, it has been possible to verify the existence of 538 irregular documents, with which they have been able to justify as legal provenance and to introduce to the market more than 537 tons of orange, of unknown origin, although they are supposed to come from criminal acts (abductions). That is why the agents proceeded to take dozens of demonstrations, from people who supposedly appeared as owners of the agricultural land, to clarify these facts.
modus Operandi
From the various manifestations, sufficient information has been obtained to establish four clearly defined cases of DATA:
On the one hand there has been the case of the existence of owners who had not given authorization for the collection of stripe orange in the 2016-2017 season, therefore they had not made any DATA, but on the contrary they have been located during He studied documents supposedly issued by them, which is a clear case of falsification.
It has also been given that owners who had given authorization on a single occasion, therefore had only made a single DATA, but as in the previous case they have found numerous DATA allegedly made by them, another clear case of forgery.
In third place is the case of owners who have made several authorizations through different DATA, but after this the authors have used their filiation data in an illicit way to make as many DATA with which varieties have been sold that the person which consists of the owner does not cultivate, on dates other than the authorizations or places that do not correspond to their land.
Finally, three cases have been observed in which the owners have not recognized the DATA in which their filiation data appear as lawful, denying having made the number of DATA that are presumed to have been made by them. In these cases, the authorized cases have not only made the falsification of the DATA, but at the time of selling the fruit, they have made the invoices on behalf of the persons who had registered as authorized, making with them a forgery of commercial document , apart from the falsification of DATA.
45 crimes
The final result of the investigation was the falsification of 538 DATA, related to more than 537 tons of orange, taking 58 accusations, 51 men and 7 women, of different nationalities (Spanish, Moroccan, Romanian, Armenian, Bulgarian and Ecuadorian) and aged between 19 and 62 years.
Among all they add a total of 45 crimes of falsification of private document and 3 crimes of falsification of commercial document.
