Spain’s Guardia Civil has arrested 11 individuals for “crimes against Public Health (Agri-Food Fraud), Fraud, Against the Market and Consumers and membership of a Criminal Group” after it uncovered a sophisticated saffron fraud scheme. “Operation Garden” was carried out in Malaga, Barcelona, Alicante, Granada, and Almeria, and was carried out in participation with Europol and the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF).
According to a statement issued by the Guardia Civil, the companies under investigation had been pulverizing gardenia extract and selling it as saffron throughout Spain.
Eleven arrests have been made in the crackdown, known as Operation Garden, with members of the ring accused of crimes against public health as well as fraud and membership of a criminal organization. In the sophisticated scam, the gang had worked out a way to make the substitution almost undetectable. While gardenia has a similar colour and has often been used to counterfeit saffron, it can usually be spotted because it contains a marker compound that is absent from the genuine spice.
The fraudsters found a way of reducing the concentration of the marker to levels that were practically undetectable, reducing the risk of detection, and allowing them to distribute tonnes of the much cheaper ingredient at inflated prices – using fake importation documents – across Spain.
The operation focused on three businesses operating in Malaga, Barcelona, Alicante, Granada, and Almeria with links to a factory producing powdered extract in China. More than 2,000 kg of the material was seized, valued at more than €750,000 ($822,000)
In the EU, gardenia is not considered to be a foodstuff, so selling it as a spice contravenes health and food safety regulations.
Saffron should be harvested from the stigma of crocus sativus Linnaeus, and 85,000 are needed to produce a single kilogram. The finest saffron sells for upwards of £6 a gram, or £6,000 ($7,640) a kilo, but gardenia costs a fraction of that.
The fraudsters are thought to have made at least €3m from the sale of the fake saffron, according to a Guardia Civil statement, which estimates they made an 800% markup on the extract.
There was a previous incident last year where Spanish police and customs officers arrested 17 people on May 2021 and seized half a tonne of saffron after breaking up a gang that allegedly imported the spice from Iran, bulked it out, and sold it as a much-prized Spanish variety.
The arrests came at the end of a two-year investigation that began when officers noticed that companies in and around Ciudad Real, 180km (112 miles) south of Madrid, were importing large quantities of Iranian saffron. Once in Spain, the spice was processed, dyed, packaged and branded as saffron from La Mancha, which has a protected designation of origin status.