		<div class="wpcnt">
			<div class="wpa">
				<span class="wpa-about">Advertisements</span>
				<div class="u top_amp">
							<amp-ad width="300" height="265"
		 type="pubmine"
		 data-siteid="111265417"
		 data-section="1">
		</amp-ad>
				</div>
			</div>
		</div><p>A businessman has been found guilty of being part of a near £200,000 conspiracy to pass off 30 tonnes of horsemeat as beef, much of which went on to enter the food chain.</p>
<p>Andronicos Sideras, 55, one of the owners of meat manufacturer Dinos &#038; Sons, mixed the meats together before it was sold on to other firms in a plot which deceived consumers and food processors.</p>
<p>The jury of five men and seven women at Inner London Crown Court took 10 hours and 17 minutes to deliver a majority guilty verdict following a four-week trial.</p>
<p>Ulrik Nielsen, 58, owner of FlexiFoods, and his &#8220;right-hand man&#8221;, Alex Beech, 44, had already pleaded guilty to their part in the plot.</p>
<p>The court heard how Danish-owned company FlexiFoods would buy horsemeat and beef from suppliers across Europe and have it delivered to Dinos in Tottenham, north London.</p>
<p>Labels and paperwork were fabricated to make the mixed meat appear like pure beef, before it was sold on to food manufacturers making products for a &#8220;vast range of well-known companies&#8221;, prosecutor Jonathan Polnay told the trial.</p>
<p>Dinos is a provider for several Greek restaurants, supermarkets and other producers.</p>
<p>Mr Polnay told the court during the trial that the plot was &#8220;motivated by greed&#8221; and said it could not have happened without the &#8220;connivance&#8221; of Sideras.</p>
<p>At the time, beef could be sold at a wholesale price of three euros per kilogram, while horsemeat was cheaper at two euros per kilogram.</p>
<p>The plot unravelled in September 2012 when one of the loads ended up in a Freeza Meat store in Newry, Northern Ireland, and a surprise health inspection by Newry and Mourne District Council later revealed a third of the pallets contained horsemeat.</p>
<p>Horse ID chips, roughly the size of a grain of rice, were also found in the meat.</p>
<p>They belonged to two horses named Trak and Wiktor from the Lodz region of Poland, and a third Irish Hunter horse called Carnesella Lady, from rural county Galway.</p>
<p>The horses had all been owned by farmers who sold them on to parties who police said failed to re-register the animals, meaning they could only be traced back to their original owners.</p>
<p>The animals had not been sold for slaughter and there is no suggestion the farmers had any involvement in the conspiracy, police said.</p>
<p>Sideras, of Southgate, north London, had claimed that he was not part of the conspiracy and had only stored the product for FlexiFoods.</p>
<p>But the jury found him guilty of one count of conspiracy to defraud between January 1 and November 30 2012, the same charge to which Nielsen and Beech had earlier pleaded guilty.</p>
<p>Dinos had a number of infringements for mislabelling products between 2007 and 2012.</p>
<p>Sideras was released on bail ahead of sentencing alongside Nielsen, of Gentofte in Denmark, and Beech, from Sutton-on-Hull, on Monday at the same court.</p>
			<div style="padding-bottom:15px;" class="wordads-tag" data-slot-type="belowpost">
				<div id="atatags-dynamic-belowpost-68ed721347576">
					<script type="text/javascript">
						window.getAdSnippetCallback = function () {
							if ( false === ( window.isWatlV1 ?? false ) ) {
								// Use Aditude scripts.
								window.tudeMappings = window.tudeMappings || [];
								window.tudeMappings.push( {
									divId: 'atatags-dynamic-belowpost-68ed721347576',
									format: 'belowpost',
								} );
							}
						}

						if ( document.readyState === 'loading' ) {
							document.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded', window.getAdSnippetCallback );
						} else {
							window.getAdSnippetCallback();
						}
					</script>
				</div>
			</div>
Discover more from London Glossy Post
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
