Major European retailers have issued recalls on packages of hamburger and meatballs over the past two weeks when much of the meat turned out to be horse instead of beef. And at least one of the companies reportedly involved in the scandal is registered in the Virgin Islands.
The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a non-profit group that produces investigative journalism in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, reported Feb. 15 that the horsemeat was sold from a series of Romanian slaughterhouses through Draap Trading Limited, a Cyprus-registered company. “Draap” is the Dutch word for horse, “paard,” spelled backwards.
The OCCRP alleges that Trident Trust, a trust company with offices in Cyprus and the VI, incorporated Hermes Guardian Limited, a VI-registered firm that owns Draap. Records on file at the VI Financial Services Commission’s Registry of Corporate Affairs support that claim, showing that Trident incorporated Hermes on Aug. 30, 2000.
The records show that the annual registration fees for Hermes were paid each year and that the company remains in good standing with the FSC.
Representatives of Trident Trust’s VI office did not return calls seeking comment as of the Beacon’s print deadline.
Rosie Sharpe, a campaigner with the United Kingdom-based activist group Global Witness, alleged in a press release that the secrecy offered by VI companies, which do not require beneficial owners to be publicly listed, contributed to the scandal.
“What’s needed is for there to be public registries of the true ‘beneficial’ owners of companies and other corporate vehicles,” she said.
About 350 tons of the horsemeat, which is cheaper to produce than ground beef, came from Doly Com slaughterhouse in Romania during the past two years, according to the OCCRP, which interviewed the slaughterhouse’s owner, Iulian Cazacut. The slaughterhouse owner said that Draap knew what kind of meat it was buying because it was unprocessed and correctly labeled.
“We worked for two years with this Cyprus company. They started buying beef from us a month ago but previously they only bought horse,” he told OCCRP.
Draap then sold the meat to French food processing companies, which distributed it throughout Europe. The food processing firms claim the meat they received was not labeled as horse, according to the OCCRP.
According to the Guardian newspaper, sales of frozen hamburger patties to retailers such as Tesco and Aldi have declined 43 percent since an Irish food safety regulator announced in January that it detected the widespread use of horsemeat in the processed meat. Furniture retailer Ikea joined the recall earlier this month when it announced that horsemeat had been found in the Swedish meatballs it offers in its stores.
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