‘Con man tricked supermarkets into selling horsemeat’

Documents were falsified to fool firms that then sent products into food chain labelled as ‘beef’, trial told

HORSEMEAT was unknowingly sold by supermarkets after three men secretly mixed it with beef and then falsified documents, a court has heard. Allegations as to the chain of events that led horsemeat to enter the food chain has been publicly outlined for the first time in the trial of a businessman said to have played a “key role”.

Andronicos Sideras, 55, is alleged to have mixed horsemeat with beef and then forged paperwork to sell it on as “100 per cent beef” to manufacturers who made products for retailers including Tesco, Co-op and Asda.

The shipments amounted to 30,000kg of the meat, the jury was told. The contamination was first identified in Ireland before tests by the Food Standards Agency found horsemeat in products on sale in the UK. At the height of the furore, thousands of items were pulled from the shelves as supermarkets were forced to apologise.

Mr Sideras, from London, was arrested in 2013 alongside Ulrik Nielsen, 57, the owner of Danish company Flexifoods and his “right-hand man”, Alex Ostler-beech, 44, from Hull, Inner London Crown Court heard.

All three were charged with conspiracy to defraud and the latter two admitted their part in the 2012 scam. Mr Sideras, who denies the charge, coowned Dinos & Sons, a meat company in Tottenham, north London.

Flexifoods bought horsemeat and beef from suppliers across Europe and had it delivered to Dinos & Sons, which allegedly charged up to four times more than usual storage costs to mix the meats into “horsebeef ”.

Jonathan Polnay, prosecuting, said: “While at Dinos, the horsemeat and the beef would be mixed together into a single load. Dinos would create false paperwork and labels to make it look like all the meat being supplied was beef.” Meanwhile, Flexifoods, which has an office in Hull, would sell the mixed meat to Martin Mcadam, owner of Irish meat trading company Mcadam Food Products, the jury was told.

Mr Polnay said it was unclear whether Mr Mcadam was aware he was buying “horsebeef ”.

He added: “Mr Mcadam had the contacts to sell the meat on to large meat production companies that make products for well-known companies in this country and, in fact, all across Europe. It goes without saying that they would be told they were buying beef.” Flexifoods would then arrange for the mixed meat to be delivered from Dinos to the “large production companies”.

Mr Polnay said the fraud “needed someone” to physically mix the meat and make documents “look genuine”. “We say that key role was taken by Andronicos Sideras.” Mr Polnay said a trail of falsified invoices, ledgers and emails between Mr Sideras and Flexifoods was “almost direct evidence of the conspiracy”. The trial of Mr Sideras continues.