The Civil Guard of Calpe has carried out an extensive and laborious investigation, in which thousands of agricultural documents have been analyzed and that 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 agents of the ROCA Team of the Civil Guard initiated the investigation in June of last year 2018, under the framework of the Plan Against Theft in Farming and Livestock Farming, making it coincide, in addition, with the citrus harvesting campaign, so present in the zone.
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.
DATA document
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 (starting point, polygon and plot) in which the
collection, identification of the transporters / collectors, amount of estimated production, destination of the fruit, date of collection and signature of the owner.
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. Because much of the fruit belongs to the stripe and that, sometimes, the amount of orange stolen does not cause too much damage
economic, the injured do not report thefts. This fact has made the research work even more difficult, so we would like to emphasize the need to denounce any fact, however slight it may be considered.
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.
Second, 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 affiliation data in an illicit way to make
as many DATA with which varieties have been sold that the person who is registered as 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.
Final balance
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. It is important to insist on the obligation that farmers and owners of agricultural land have in the making of DATA, when the harvesting of any kind of fruit is carried out, as long as the transfer of said merchandise is not carried out by them. The non-preparation of the document, on the
of the farmer for the transfer of the merchandise, can trigger in the commission of a criminal act, as for the falsification of a DATA and, on the other hand, the farmer would be incurring in an administrative infraction by not complying with his obligations of traceability.
Thanks to Operation Traza 2.0, there has been a substantial decrease in the crimes committed against the estate in the citrus season so far this season, since this document has served to bring a
greater control over citrus sales in the stores.
