Three charged with fraud over horsemeat scandal

THREE men have been charged in connection with the horsemeat scandal more than three years after it sent shock waves through the British food industry.

Ulrik Nielsen, 57, from Denmark, Alex Ostler-Beech, 43, from Hull, and Andronicos Sideras, 54, from London are accused of passing off horsemeat as beef in 2012. All three men have been charged with conspiracy to defraud and will appear before magistrates in London next month.

The details of the charge are that between Jan 1 2012 and Oct 31 2012, the accused men conspired, and with others, to defraud purchasers of goods that contained a mixture of beef and horsemeat, by arranging for beef and horsemeat to be combined for sale as beef.

The men were first arrested in 2013 as part of an investigation by the City of London Police following claims that horse flesh and other meat was being sold to food producers as beef.

The scandal caused panic and saw supermarkets remove thousands of food items and issue apologies.

The contamination was first identified in Ireland before tests by the Food Standards Agency found horsemeat in products on sale in the UK.

City of London Police, which worked with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the Food Standards Agency, said Mr Ostler-Beech and Mr Sideras were first arrested in July 2013. Mr Nielsen, from Gentofte, near Copenhagen, was interviewed under caution in Hull the following month with a 52year-old man who faces no further action. Police said it had been a complex and lengthy investigation with a number of companies involved.

Kristin Jones, CPS head of specialist fraud, said: “The CPS has today authorised charges against three men relating to the sale of mixed beef and horsemeat products which were sold as beef. After carefully considering evidence from the UK and overseas, the CPS has decided that there is sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and it is in the public interest to charge these three men.”

In January last year abattoir owner, Peter Boddy, 65, from Todmorden, West Yorks, became the first person to be convicted over the horsemeat scandal. He pleaded guilty to failing to comply with food traceability regulations over 17 horse carcasses sold for meat. Boddy admitted selling horse flesh for consumption, but failed to record properly who bought it. In a separate prosecution slaughterhouse bosses Dafydd Raw-Rees and Colin Patterson from Wales admitted mislabelling goat meat as lamb or mutton.