Earlier this week, 55-year-old Cypriot, Andronicos Sideras, was convicted of fraud for trying to pass off horsemeat as beef from his north London-based sausage processing plant, Dinos & Sons.
Throughout the trial, Sideras maintained that the company received shipments of horsemeat at the premises, but he claimed that these were only being stored on behalf of other companies.
One of these businesses was the Danish company, FlexiFoods, whose 58-year-old owner, Ulrik Nielson, and his “right-hand man”, Alex Beech, were previously charged for their involvement in the horsemeat scandal.
While UK police described Nielson as the “brains” of the operation, Sideras was singled out as the “hands” by the prosecution during the trial – with the details of the case traceable back to Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Nielson’s company is alleged to have traded meat on paper across countries and to have contracted third-parties to distribute it, while Sideras’ premises was where the horsemeat was reportedly mixed in with beef to create products that were subsequently labelled as 100% beef.
Tracing products
Most of these products were bottom of the range selections by the time they reached supermarket shelves, but impressive profits were reportedly generated by the price discrepancy between beef and horsemeat at the time the fraud was discovered in 2013 – with beef at €3/kg, compared to €2/kg for horsemeat.
Some beef that had then been used to make burgers tested positive for equine DNA and had reportedly been manufactured in the Irish factory, Silvercrest – which was part of the Larry Goodman-owned firm, the ABP Group.
Co. Monaghan meat trader Martin McAdam had allegedly been supplying frozen beef product from Poland to Silvercrest, with both McAdam and ABP insisting they had no idea that the product contained horsemeat.
The Department of Agriculture later found no evidence that McAdam’s company or Silvercrest had knowingly bought or used horsemeat, with UK police tracing the meat supplied to Silvercrest back to FlexiFoods and Dinos.
Dinos is also believed to have done business with the Dutchman who was recently arrested in Spain as part of the wider arrest of 65 people by the Spanish Guardia Civil, in partnership with Europol.
The horsemeat scandal kicked off in Ireland in 2013 when authorities first detected large traces of horsemeat in beef-labelled products, prompting a Europe-wide investigation.