Marseilles (AFP)

A fruit and vegetable wholesaler is at the heart of a vast investigation carried out under the authority of the Tarascon prosecutor's office, suspected of having passed off as French products hundreds of tonnes of Spanish vegetables, the Bouches prefecture announced on Monday. of the Rhône.

Several searches and police custody were carried out in this file, prepared for several months and involving the departmental directorate for the protection of the populations of Bouches-du-Rhône, the gendarmerie of Arles and the Directorate-General for competition, consumption and the repression of fraud, and which resulted in mid-June in a control operation, the prefecture said in a press release.

"In the field of fruits and vegetables, the so-called + francization + fraud involves a company buying products abroad, often at low prices, and reselling them claiming that they come from French production", she also detailed.

"In this case, the fruit and vegetable wholesaler is suspected of having bought in 2020 and 2021 several hundred tonnes of vegetables (zucchini, peppers, squash, asparagus, etc.) and of having disguised their origin. The vegetable labels indicating + Spain + would have been removed from the packages and packaging and replaced by labels indicating a + France + origin ", added the prefecture.

Invoices on which was written "origin: France" were also published by the wholesaler, always according to the prefecture: "therefore impossible for its customers, and the final consumer, to realize that it was, in fact , Spanish vegetables ".

Still in progress, the investigation has made it possible to determine that the customers concerned are mainly retail chains, which obtained their supplies from this wholesaler for the fruit and vegetable sections of their stores.

"This wholesaler could also have acted with the complicity of a fruit and vegetable conditioner responsible for repackaging certain vegetables in net and labeling the origin in France", continued the prefecture.

"The interest in fraud lies in the differences in price and seasonality of fruits and vegetables between producing countries. For example, last June, the Spanish pepper was trading on the wholesale market at around 2 euros / kg then that the French pepper, the harvest of which has barely begun, can be bought at nearly 3 euros / kg ", she also explained.

When established, this practice constitutes an offense of deceptive commercial practice punishable by imprisonment for two years and a fine of 300,000 euros.

In terms of "francization", the 2020 activity report of the General Directorate for Competition, Consumption and Fraud Control reports 392 establishments checked, for an "overall rate of anomalies" of 25%.

23 establishments have been or will be the subject of criminal reports, according to the prefecture.

© 2021 AFP