Author: adminficci

Counterfeit clothing dealer jailed

A TRADER found with more than £70,000 of fake clothing has been jailed for ten months. Ivan Genis, 58, of Hendon Wood Lane, Barnet, was jailed at Wood Green Crown Court last month after being found guilty of five charges of being a director of a firm looking to sell counterfeit goods. He was also ordered to pay costs of almost £18,000 to Haringey Council. The court heard how Genis sold the fake goods, including counterfeit Nike, Adidas and Ralph Lauren clothes, to retailers across the UK from his warehouse in White Hart Lane, Tottenham.
They then unwittingly sold the counterfeit clothing on to the public. When Haringey Council’s trading standards team raided the warehouse, as well as Genis’ Brands Plaza Trading Limited premises in Borehamwood, in May 2009 and July 2011, they seized thousands of t-shirts, polo shirts and tracksuit bottoms worth £73,000.
The council is now seeking to recover any profits Genis made from selling the knock-off goods, while the court ruled he must forfeit his stash of dodgy clothes.

Kimberley police confiscate illicit tobacco

Police in Kimberley in the Northern Cape have raided 30 businesses, confiscating illicit tobacco with a street value of R50 000. Police spokesperson Sergio Kock says the raids happened in De Beers, Colville, Greenpoint and Beaconsfield. He says fines were also issued to business owners for allegedly contravening the Tobacco Act as well as the Customs and Excise Act.

Kock says: “The illicit cigarettes are usually identified with the absence of the SA diamond stamp…and the cigarettes also have incorrect health warnings and the quit line number is usually also not available on the cigarettes packs.”

Tackling cheap illegal tobacco roadshow comes to Swindon

Shoppers will be warned about the dangers of illegal tobacco and encouraged to report the issue, when a campaign roadshow rolls into Swindon town centre on Friday, 4th July. Illegal tobacco is known to make it easier for children to start smoking because it is sold at pocket money prices, meaning that young people could fall prey to the lethal habit which claims the life of every 1 in 2 smokers. Illegal tobacco is also known to make communities more attractive to criminals.

Hike in taxes on Tobacco will encourage smuggling

Reports about hike in duty on tobacco products may not persuade many to give up smoking because of high prices as it is one of the products which bears heavy burden of local and Central taxes, but will certainly be good news for those who smuggle international brands into India and manufacturers of counterfeit products as it would make their trade more attractive because of huge price difference between products of legitimate manufacturers and those who pay no taxes.

Smuggling of cigarettes has become a major security concern for many countries as outfits like Al-Qaida and Taliban’s are turning to illicit trade to finance their activities. According to U.S department of justice bureau alcohol, firearms and tobacco are some of the items which are used to fund the activities of terrorists. In some cases container loads of cigarettes have been intercepted by authorities.

Biggest counterfeit Indian art controversy hits auction

BANGALORE: Bangalore-based Bid & Hammer’s forthcoming auction has been assailed by what, perhaps, is the biggest controversy to come to light in the Indian art market, writes Neelam Raaj. Questions have been raised about the authenticity of several artworks by celebrated artists Rabindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, K K Hebbar, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Hemendranath Majumdar and K H Ara. Even as Rabindranath Tagore’s pen and ink of three dancing figures lies in the vaults of Visva Bharati in Shantiniketan, an identical-looking work will come up for auction in Delhi on Friday.

http://www.newslivetv.com/top-news/biggest-counterfeit-indian-art-controversy-hits-auction.html

Customs team arrests Widnes suspect in ‘£11m tobacco smuggling’ raid

A 56-year-old company director from Widnes has been arrested in connection with a suspected tobacco smuggling fraud worth an estimated £11m. HM Revenue And Customs (HMRC) officers searched a property in the town on Tuesday, where they seized computers, phones and business records allegedly relating to a criminal enterprise. Addresses were also searched in south Armagh in Northern Ireland yesterday as part of the same operation. The arrest follows the seizure of 32m illicit cigarettes and nearly five tons of shisha tobacco by officers from the Revenue’s Customs Service and the An Garda Siochana in Drogheda in Ireland on Tuesday.

One in Ten Cigarettes Consumed in the EU in 2013 Were Illegal; Dramatic Rise in Consumption of ‘Illicit Whites’

New KPMG Study for British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Japan Tobacco International and Philip Morris International

London, June 24, 2014 – One in every ten cigarettes consumed in the European Union in 2013 were illicit, 33% of which were “illicit whites”, an emerging type of illegal, branded cigarettes manufactured for the sole purpose of being smuggled, according to a KPMG study published today. At these levels, EU governments lost approximately €10.9 billion to the illegal market.

KPMG found that while the number of “illicit whites” consumed increased by 15% compared to 2012, overall, the illegal trade of cigarettes in the EU stabilized, declining slightly from a record high of 11.1% in 2012 to 10.5% in 2013. This stabilization was due to a significant decrease in contraband cigarettes, legal cigarettes typically smuggled from low tax countries to high tax countries, as industry, governments and law enforcement increased efforts to curtail this illegal activity.