Banana fraud is uncovered
20 May 2004
The EU's anti-fraud office announced the discovery of illegal imports
of bananas using false licences on July 9th 2002. This illegal trafficking
in bananas made hundreds of millions of euros for the unscrupulous
traders involved, and covered the whole of central and southern
Italy. Indeed there were even links to France, Spain and Portugal.
Uncovering the fraud was, however, purely fortuitous, for at the
outset the Italian authorities' enquires were aimed at monitoring
a vessel suspected of carrying cocaine. According to the Italian
investigator 'more profit can be made from this type of fraud than
from serious crime such as importing a tonne of cocaine'. Four factors
were seen to have made this fraud possible:
- the complex nature of Community regulations;
- the transnational nature of the fraud;
- the existence of an organised criminal system;
-
the dispersal of judicial authorities throughout the entire
European Union.