Blackmailers have threatened to poison the products of eight big food, drink and cosmetics multinationals in France unless they pay a ransom of 1-million euros ($1,2-million).
A police spokesperson declined to give details or name the companies, but confirmed that a surveillance operation involving 350 officers began last week in Toulouse, the south-western city where the threatening letters were posted.
”We are taking it seriously”, the spokesperson said.
”Corporate blackmail like this can be disastrous for the companies concerned, even if the threat isn’t real. The top priority now is to identify the blackmailers.”
French newspapers have reproduced some of the letters, which feature the heading ”AZF” above a skull and crossbones. They contain precise instructions for paying the ransom, involving taping a credit card to each of 2 000 road signs around the country.
In letters quoted by Le Parisien the group says the cards, drawing on a bank account holding â,¬1-million, should be taped only to road signs featuring the colour red, located in open country outside towns or villages, and along three defined routes in the south-west and Normandy.
”Each card must be enclosed in a transparent, waterproof plastic envelope to resist cold and rain for a period of several months if necessary,” one letter said.
The method was designed to ensure that ”we can pick up as many or as few credit cards as we choose, when we choose, and verify the absence of any trap,” it added.
Spokespersons for the eight companies, said to include the makers of leading brands of coffee, chocolate, yogurt, cosmetics and fizzy drinks, have said they are cooperating closely with police and sending all communications to a central ”war room” for analysis.
The main supermarket chains have been warned to tighten security, the interior ministry said.
Acknowledging that the affair could have a dramatic impact on sales and shares, one spokesperson told Le Parisien: ”The important thing for us is that our name isn’t mentioned. We just hope the police will do their job. As for our products, security has been tightened on all our production lines.”
Three of the companies said they had already communicated with the blackmailers through small ads in Le Figaro.
The police spokesperson said the tone and language of the letters indicated that the campaign was unrelated to a blackmail plot earlier this year in which a group also calling itself AZF demanded â,¬5-million from the government in exchange for revealing the locations of 10 bombs it said it had hidden under French railway tracks.
Two potentially lethal devices were eventually found by police officers and railway workers last March, after a painstaking search of the entire network. The group later said it was stopping its campaign for ”technological reasons”, and no arrests have so far been made.
The United States, Japan, Germany and Italy have all had blackmail attempts using threats to poison food products.
The most damaging case was probably that of Glico, a Japanese confectionery maker, which was forced to withdraw all its products from supermarket shelves at an estimated loss of $146-million.
AZF is the name of a chemical factory which exploded in Toulouse in September 2001, killing 30 people and injuring several hundred.
Although the official inquiry is still under way, the authorities have said that the explosion was accidental. – Guardian Unlimited Â