The olives came from Spain. Two men were sentenced to prison terms for deceiving the provenance of olives sold to mills in the controlled appellation region of Les Baux-de-Provence, we learned Thursday from a judicial source.
One of the defendants was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, including six months’ imprisonment and the second to 18 months suspended, sentences accompanied for both of a ban on carrying out any commercial or industrial activity for five years, indicated the parquet floor of Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhône) in a press release.
320,000 euros in profits
The two defendants were prosecuted for having sold a total of 160 tonnes of olives to several olive mills, allegedly harvested in the AOP Baux-de-Provence area, but in fact coming from Spain. A fraud which had brought them a total of some 320,000 euros.
The deception was discovered during an administrative check in a mill in 2015. The investigation then made it possible to seize invoices proving the fraudulent origin of the fruits, resold well above their real value.
One of the two men had also engaged in another fraud, much less significant in volume, bottling and reselling under Baux-de-Provence labels a few hundred bottles of any olive oil purchased in the supermarket.