CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Overnight, Queensland Police have charged 39 people with blackmarket grocery offences, including cultivating and trafficking a commercial quantity of lettuce.
Police say the $400 million crime syndicates targeted in yesterday’s statewide raids is the biggest in Queensland history.
This comes as as growing number of working Australian families are forced to go engage with the underworld in an effort to keep up with the unsustainable cost of living – with illegal motorcycle gangs filling the void the left by overpriced supermarkets.
Household grocery items have spiked beyond affordable prices in recent weeks due to a wetter-than-average start to the year and flooding in southern Queensland, resulting in a massive shortage of fruit and vegetables, leaving Australia’s major supermarket giants in a position to take advantage of both farmers and consumers with price-gouging that they can blame on the weather.
As a result, the cost of everyday items has risen sharply, with a head of lettuce costing more $12 in some suburbs.
The officers involved in this major police sting, which has been named Operation Iceberg, alleged that bikies have been importing cheaper heads of lettuce from countries where farmers aren’t handcuffed to the exploitive duopoly of Woolworths and Coles, and can actually sell a couple of leaves for an affordable rate.
There have also been instances of major supermarket chains having their trucks hijacked by tactical heist crews driving modified Honda Civics.
However, it seems Queensland’s illegal lettuce trade might’ve been severely compromised yesterday, as Operation Iceberg signed off on close to 50 warrants for those implicated in the racket.
While the raids took only hours to conduct, it resulted in 43 arrests and the alleged seizure of several tonnes of both Butterhead and Green Leaf lettuce – with an estimated street value of $30 million.
Thirty were remanded in custody to appear in court today, where they will answer for their disgraceful crimes of undercutting the powerful grocery cartels that dictate prices on shelves without any consideration given to the cost of living.
