“Operation Mamma Mia” has revealed a milti-million euro scam where cheaper Spanish and Greek oils were being palmed off to consumers as Italian extra virgin oil in an effort to cash in on the cachet of an Italian brand.
The undercover operation discovered that some producers were falsely labelling their bottles.
Italian police said it was a “vast and proven system of fraud”.
Authorities impounded 2,000 tonnes of the falsified oil worth €13 million.
Eight producers from the regions of Umbria, Calabria and Puglia are under investigation on charges of fraud and false accounting.
The offence was not in using either Greek or Spanish oil per se but in falsely claiming it to be Italian.
Only last November it was revealed that seven of Italy’s best known olive oil companies were under investigation for substituting inferior quality oil for extra virgin oil.
The superior oil can command a third more than lower quality, allowing the criminal producers to rake in millions.
Counterfeiting extra virgin oil is far too easy and the swizz has been going on for years.
The largest quantity of Italian olive oil comes from the southern region of Puglia where the Xylella fastidiosa bacterium is believed to have infected as many as one million olive trees, some of them centuries old.
Many of the trees have died or been cut down in an attempt to halt the bacterium’s spread.
