GOTS obtains evidence against organic cotton fraud in India

Through its own investigation, GOTS has finally obtained substantial documentary evidence confirming rumors about systematic fraud abusing the Indian government certification system of organic cotton production. During surveillance audits by GOTS accreditation body IOAS attended by GOTS experts, they detected fake raw cotton transaction certificates (TCs).

These TCs had been created by fraudsters using APEDA (Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority of the Indian Government) templates with fake QR codes which led to a cloned APEDA website to pretend the TCs were authentic. GOTS has assured knowledge of 20.000 metric tons of fake material.

GOTS reported that it accepts raw organic cotton if it is certified to any of the IFOAM Family of Standards. In India, the nodal agency to certify organic raw cotton for export is APEDA. Their system is similar to GOTS’, where TCs are issued by their Certification Bodies (CBs) and carry information about certified produce (volume, transport details, buyer, seller, etc.).

GOTS has instructed its’ approved CBs to cancel all upstream TCs issued based on wrongly issued TCs in order to prevent affected goods from being sold with GOTS labels. A certification ban (CB) on 11 companies was imposed and the contract with one approved CB was terminated.

GOTS has submitted all facts to APEDA urging an investigation, criminal prosecution, and improvement. All GOTS-certified organisations have been informed on the matter and are being provided guidance accordingly.

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