A “massive disempowerment”… Up to five years in prison, two of which are suspended, were requested by the public prosecutor on Tuesday in Marseille, against eighteen French, Belgian and Dutch defendants implicated in a vast fraud case with horse meat.
The representative of the public prosecutor’s office, Guillaume Bricier, castigated “the game of each of the actors to say:” I have nothing to reproach myself for because it is the other “”. In the crosshairs of his indictment: the horse dealers, touts and veterinarians, men in their fifties or sixties for the most part, who are accused of having participated in the introduction into the food chain of animals unfit for consumption by means of false documents.
100,000 euro fine
Five years in prison, two of which were suspended, were requested against the main defendant, Jean-Marc Decker, 58, a major Belgian trader in equidae in Europe, as well as a fine of 100,000 euros, a ban on exercising equine butcher and a five-year ban on French territory.
Sentences ranging from six months suspended to four years, two of which were suspended, were requested against the other defendants in this trial for “organized gang fraud and deception endangering human health”, against a background of sprains European regulations “with scythes and use of scythes”, for horses from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France or Poland.