Expired products including frozen meat, poultry, and fish were imported into Lithuania as part of a large-scale fraud operation, the country’s police said on Monday.
"A well-organised group of individuals and business companies were found to have organised and carried out the importation, wholesale and retail sale of expired food products into Lithuania,” Saulius Briginas, deputy head of the Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau, told reporters.
"Officials from Germany, France, Italy and Estonia were involved in the operation. Two international law enforcement agencies, Europol and Eurojust, also took part,” he said. ”In Lithuania, more than 300 officers were deployed for this operation.”
The police discovered food products, bearing falsified expiry dates, which would amounting to around ”a thousand truckloads”, Briginas said.
The firms supplied products to some 70 retail chains in various Lithuanian cities. However, they were not sold to the largest supermarkets.
To help sell the products, the fraud ring also established its own shopping chain, Sale.
According to Briginas, some of the products had been expired for seven or eight years.
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