The Grocer – 13 January 2018

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sausage manufacturer Dinos & Sons, for questioning,

and sifting through the rotten remains of the 12 tonnes

found in Northern Ireland for further proof.

But it would take years before Briars had the evi-

dence he needed to bring Sideras and accomplices Ulrik

Nielsen and Alex Beech, both from Hull-based Flexi-

Foods, to trial (see box, p29). It wasn’t fast enough for

some. “MPs were putting pressure on us, and with any

slight indication something was happening journalists

would park outside,” says Briars.

“The whole thing for a while became a frenzy but we

had to build our case slowly, so they got frustrated.”

The fact that his team dwindled from “one sergeant

and a handful of analysts” to “yours truly” didn’t help.

When the jail sentences were finally handed down in

September 2017, “it was quite something”.

“We’d been waiting for 14 months for the trial from

the date they were charged. Before that we had at least

12 months of waiting for them to review the evidence.

It was a sense of relief. It had been a long road.”

Catching the bad guys

Suspects at the heart of the EU network though,

through which slaughtered horses were shipped in

from Romania, allegedly by Dutch meat trader Draap,

and sold on to French processor Spanghero and manu-

factured into Findus lasagnes, are yet to stand trial for

their part in the scandal, despite being charged in 2014.

Ultimately, the ringleaders got away, believes Norman

Bagley, director at the Association of Independent Meat

Suppliers, who spoke out on behalf of small independ-

ent meat processors who, he felt, were unfairly targeted

throughout the scandal.

“The three men prosecuted were but a pinprick in the

scale of the whole thing,” he says. “Five years ago, of

course, scapegoats were needed and these micro busi-

nesses were tailor-made for the job, even though all the

‘horsemeat’ that was legitimately traded between them

added up to no more than a couple of pallets of meat,

when the true scale of the entire horsemeat operation

added up to literally thousands of tonnes.”

The real smoking gun went unchecked, he believes.

“It was left to Mary Creagh, the shadow Defra minister,

to ask the killer question ‘where are the 25,000 missing

horses in Southern Ireland?’, to the complete embar-

rassment of the Defra minister.”

But while politicians hurled allegations at their

March 2015

West Yorkshire abattoir owner

Peter Boddy is fined £8,000 after

pleading guilty to breaching EU

traceability regs. The 65-year-old

sold 55 carcases without keeping

records of where they were going,

37 of which he claimed went to

Italian restaurants.

October 2016

Alex Beech, 44, and Ulrik Nielsen,

57, from Flexi-Foods, both plead

guilty to conspiracy to defraud

between January and October

2012. Sentencing is postponed
      until the trial of the third suspect
      Sideras, who pleads not guilty.

September 2017

Sideras, 55, is found guilty in July

and sentenced to four and a half

years. Nielsen is jailed for three

and a half years at Inner London

Crown Court, and Alex Beech is

given a suspended sentence.

prices in the food and drink supply

chain contributed to a climate in

which the UK became vulnerable

to fraud.

January 2015

The National Food Crime Unit

recommended by Elliott is up

and running, though questions

continue as to whether it possesses

the necessary skills and funding

to investigate and tackle a serious

fraud on the scale of Horsegate.

HOW HORSE

REACHED

THE UK

1. Beef was shipped into London by
   Flexi-Foods from Poland


2. Horsemeat was then shipped into
   London from Ireland


3. The two were mixed together in
   London by Dinos & Sons and relabelled
   as ‘beef’


4. The contaminated beef was sold back
   to suppliers in Ireland


5. Flexi-Foods had offices in Denmark,
   from where emails were exchanged with
   their conspirators in London

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