The Civil Guard of the Spanish municipality of Calp is questioning 58 people for the alleged falsification of 538 agricultural traceability documents (DATA), which accompanied more than 537 tons of oranges of irregular origin. The arrested are accused of a total of 45 crimes of forgery of private documents and three crimes of forgery of commercial documents. The operation, as reported by the Armed Institute, has followed the analysis of thousands of DATA documents in recent months.
The agents of the Roca Team of the Civil Guard of Calp started an investigation in June 2018 under the framework of the Plan Against Theft in Agricultural and Livestock Farms, making it coincide with the start of the citrus harvest. Since then, and up until April, hundreds of forged DATA documents or, at least, with certain irregularities, have been detected in citrus warehouses in the province of Alicante. The aforementioned document is mandatory for each batch weighting over 20 kilos and includes data on the owner of the land and its location, the product's harvesters or transporters, the production volume or the destination of the product.
Much of the fruit comes from discards, and sometimes, the theft doesn't cause much financial damage, so those affected don't report it, making the investigation difficult. The persons charged for the 48 alleged crimes are 51 men and 7 women of Spanish, Moroccan, Romanian, Armenian, Bulgarian and Ecuadorian nationalities, aged between 19 and 62 years.
