Adulterated wine, three arrests between Florence and Campania

2020-01-22T08:52:36.942Z

Low quality wine, adulterated with the addition of alcohol, it was marketed in Italy and abroad as Chianti doc, Brunello di Montalcino or Sassicaia. This is what was discovered by the carabinieri of the Health Protection Group in Rome and the Nas of Florence, who arrested three people this morning, who ended up under house arrest as part of an investigation coordinated by the DDA of Florence. The recipients of the precautionary measures are the de facto owner of a farm in Empoli, where the counterfeit wine was bottled and packaged, and two men from Campania who procured the necessary material for counterfeiting (labels, clamps, capsules and packaging). In the investigation, conducted by the DDA prosecutor Giulio Monferini, 10 people were investigated, each of whom would have played a specific role in the criminal organization. According to what was ascertained, the low quality wine, but not harmful to health based on the analyzes carried out by the technical consultants of the Florentine prosecutor's office, was adulterated with the addition of alcohol to increase its alcohol content. Then it was bottled and counterfeited, making it appear a high quality product through the affixing on the bottles of false labels of fine wines. Also use false ties with the state seal that certified the denominations doc and docg. Once packaged, the wine was stored in stores of Lazio and Emilia-Romagna companies, attributable to the suspects, and then sold in Italy and, above all, abroad, where tens of thousands of bottles would have been shipped. In one case, a consignment of 18 thousand bottles was sent to Costa Rica. The investigations took place a year and a half ago after the seizure of two bottles of counterfeit wine, carried out on the recommendation of a restaurateur in a shop in the Osmannoro area in Florence. Last February the carabinieri seized the Empolese farm. In the company, during the arrangement with creditors, about 9 thousand liters of red wine ready to be bottled, a hundred bottles already packaged, hundreds of falsified labels and wine wraps of various brands and thousands of capsules were seized, as well as 30 liters of alcohol used for adulteration. According to what the magistrate wrote in the papers, the criminal organization had carried out a counterfeiting activity "of devastating proportions" for the quantity of wines produced and sent abroad. To finance their activities, those arrested, all already known to the police, would also have created a system of scams through the acquisition of companies in crisis.