De Cecco, wheat origin fraud? The Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Chieti has launched an investigation against the president and two executives of F.lli De Cecco S.p.A., suspected of falsifying the origin of a huge consignment of French wheat, 4,575 tons, renamed as ‘Apulian’.
The news was broadcast by the regional TGR, on RAI Abruzzo, on Saturday, 14.11.20. And it has ‘curiously’ escaped the news agencies and mainstream media, which thus confirm their subservience to the strong powers. A systemic disgrace from which only The Daily Fact escapes. Ad memoriam.
De Cecco, alleged fraud and fumus commissi delicti
The investigation by the Chieti Public Prosecutor’s Office was initiated as a result of a specific report collected by the Carabinieri of the NAS (Nucleo Anti-Sofistication Unit). They therefore searched the offices of the F.lli De Cecco S.p.A. plant in Fara San Martino, sifting through business documents, materials stored in computers and servers, electronic correspondence. And thus emerged the correspondence regarding the purchase of a batch of French wheat ‘reclassified’ as Apulian.
‘Good evening, the President informs that French wheat arriving in Ortona on 13.2.20 should be considered as Pugliese wheat.’
The most serious clue – the fumus commissi delicti, in forensic jargon – consists of a email sent on 10.2.20 by F.lli De Cecco S.p.A.’s purchasing office director Mario Aruffo to the chief miller and management control coordinator, as well as to the secretariat of President Filippo Antonio De Cecco. With orders to amend the records, writing ‘Apulian’ wheat in the purchase order for wheat shipped to Les Sables d’Olone (Northeast France, Atlantic Sea).
De Cecco, fraud alleged during similar antitrust investigation
The evidence gathered by the NAS military triggered the so-called ‘notices of guarantee’ to De Cecco. Suspected trade fraud for its namesake president, in conjunction with purchasing director Mario Aruffo. The former head of quality control, who had meanwhile left the group in May 2020 (and could hardly have opposed a decision by ‘cavalier’ De Cecco), is also mentioned.
At the same time that F.lli De Cecco S.p.A. was purchasing the French wheat that is the subject of this investigation, in October 2019, the Antitrust Authority (Autorità Garante per la Concorrenza e il Mercato, AGCM) was carrying out an investigation into precisely the way in which the origin of wheat was indicated on its pasta labels. This coincidence in time can perhaps help understand why the Fara San Martino giant literally genuflected before AGCM officials. Even pledging to give up writing ‘De Cecco method‘ and ‘130-year recipe‘ in order to put an immediate end to the investigation.
World’s third largest pasta producer ‘in chaos’?
Abruzzo’s Rai Regional News reports that the world’s third-largest pasta producer-after Barilla and Spain’s Ebro Foods-appears to be in chaos. And F.lli De Cecco would not comment on the facts, as summarized by the news report.
‘On the market since 1886, the Abruzzo-based group exports worldwide while maintaining a strong family connotation marked, however, by infighting. In January, the president’s two cousins, Saturnino and Giuseppe Aristide De Cecco, resigned from the board of directors. In an open letter to employees, they write of a body effectively deprived of its leadership.
Impossible not to grasp the context of the choice, after the dismissal of CEO Francesco Fattori, who was denounced by De Cecco for violation of professional secrecy, a hypothesis under investigation by the Pescara Public Prosecutor’s Office, an inexorable mechanism leads to the exit by dismissal or resignation of about 50 people in one year. Several executives, including longtime ones, are in litigation with the company, which often pays to settle. These range from challenging dismissal to bullying’. (Roberta Mancinelli, TGR Abruzzo 14.11.20).
The Land of the Three Monkeys
The amount of wheat at the center of the investigation is equivalent to more than 5 percent of annual production in Apulia (approx. 900,000 tons), which in turn expresses 20-25 percent of national production. The press silence on the affair is thus the most disturbing fact in this fragile democracy.
After all, transparency on the origin of raw materials of large industrial food productions presupposes a supply chain agreement with the agricultural side. And consumers need to know all the players in the supply chains-farmers, importers and/or stockers, millers, pasta makers-wherever they are based, in the knowledge that to date demand for Italian wheat exceeds supply.
In this land of the three monkeys, the use of public blockchain technology is perhaps really the only solution to ensure data incorruptibility.
Dario Dongo and Marta Strinati
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
Professional journalist since January 1995, he has worked for newspapers (Il Messaggero, Paese Sera, La Stampa) and periodicals (NumeroUno, Il Salvagente). She is the author of journalistic surveys on food, she has published the book "Reading labels to know what we eat".
