The judge concludes the investigation of listeriosis in Seville in 2019

The Investigating Court number 10 of Seville, which is investigating the outbreak of listeriosis that occurred in the summer of 2019 and linked to the company Magrudis SL, has issued an order in which it agrees to continue the proceedings for the abbreviated procedure against a total of seven people investigated in the procedure, while the case against four other people has been filed.

Specifically, those under investigation are José Antonio MP, de facto administrator of the company Magrudis SL; his wife, Encarnación RJ, responsible for production and start-up of the company’s self-control system; his sons Sandro José MR, sole administrator of the aforementioned company, and Mario MR, sole administrator of Elaborados Cárnicos Mario SL; Sergio LG, technical architect; David MM, economist and financial adviser of Magrudis, and María José OB, municipal veterinary inspector.

In an order notified today Wednesday to the parties involved in the procedure, the judge agrees to continue the proceedings against five of those investigated -Sandro José MR, José Antonio MP, Mario MR, Encarnación RJ and María José OB-, Magrudis SL and Elaborados Cárnicos Mario SL for a crime against public health in ideal competition with four crimes of reckless homicide, six crimes of injury to the fetus due to serious recklessness resulting in abortion and 244 crimes of injury due to serious recklessness, declaring the Seville City Council and the Insurance Company AXA SA.

The instructor considers that the City Council of Seville must respond as civil liability when considering that “a deficit and abnormal action of the public service that must be provided by” said Consistory would have been carried out, and in this sense analyzes the action developed by the municipal veterinarian that inspected the Magrudis facilities, who “scores down and omits some scores, does not collect product samples, does not check surfaces, or checks samples of the interior environment, so it does not check exactly if the installation meets the conditions, despite being obliged to evaluate all the sections of the scoring system, assessing the potential risk, the level of compliance, trust in management, the self-control system and the company’s history”, which ” It implies that he does not carry out any other inspection, entailing his possible criminal responsibility for the facts investigated.

Likewise, the magistrate agrees to continue the procedure against Sandro José MR, José Antonio MP and Sergio LG for an alleged crime of falsehood in an official document, as well as against David MM, José Antonio MP, Sandro José MR, Encarnación RJ and Mario MR for a minor crime of fraud of the electrical fluid.

The judge also agrees to file the proceedings with respect to four others investigated and transfers the case to the Prosecutor’s Office and, where appropriate, to the accusations in person, so that, within the common period of ten days, they request the opening of the trial. orally, formulating a written accusation or the dismissal of the case.

“Bad practices” by Magrudis

Specifically, the judge files the case against Antonio and Domingo ML considering that “they had no collusion with Magrudis nor did they intervene in the process of preparing the products that this entity produced and distributed, so at no time were they aware of the presence of listerosis monocytogenes in February 2019 in some products”, while also filing it with respect to Federico RD, “who was never associated with the Magrudis company, limiting himself to selling its products as a commercial”, and with respect to Isabel RJ, because ” the only thing that has been proven is that he worked in Magrudis and was dedicated to the billing and hiring of workers, but not that he intervened in the preparation and production of food or that he had decision-making capacity regarding it.

In the order, the judge indicates that the proceedings were initiated by virtue of a statement from the Civil Guard, which began the operation called ‘Monocy’ in which a series of illegal activities were investigated through which “it would be put in the commercial chain of food for people processed meat with the presence of listeria monocytogenes in concentrations that would make it unsuitable for human consumption” due to “malpractice in the handling and transformation of meat products”, which caused “mass poisoning resulting in deaths, injuries to fetuses resulting in abortions and injuries throughout the national territory and especially in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia”, thus leading to the issuance of a health alert at a national and European level by the Andalusian Government and the Ministry of Public Health”.

This “health alert” focused the outbreak of listeria on the facilities of the Magrudis company, asserts the magistrate, who recalls the expert report carried out in the proceedings to highlight that “the bad practices carried out” by said company “and the lack of consideration of the minimum rules of food safety are the main and determining causes” of the facts investigated.

“The spread of the outbreak was due to the lack of transparency of Magrudis, not communicating from the first minute the types of products made, the type of products distributed and the batches of each of them (complete and transparent traceability)”, recalls the judge based on to this expert report.

800,000 euros in hospital expenses

In the judge’s opinion, “the product harmful to people’s health was put on the market, losing control over the risk created, which implies that, although they did not imagine the result, they were aware of that eventuality and the probability that the product, once on the market, could cause damage to the health of consumers, as has happened, avoiding all the obligations imposed by law so that food products meet the relevant biological criteria.

The instructor points out that the expenses generated by the outbreak of listeriosis in public health – at least the expenses caused by the services provided by the Seville hospitals Virgen del Rocío and Virgen Macarena – amount to approximately 800,000 euros.