Illicit trade, an invisible enemy: MP S Dev
“Tax evasion needs to be seen as an anti-national act and illicit trade should be treated as a national threat,” stated Sushmita Dev, Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha.
She further emphasized on the need for a national agency to take over to stop the menace of illicit trade at the event that organized by FICCI CASCADE on the ‘Impact of Illicit Trade on Industry, Economy and Consumers’ on Wednesday.
While addressing the occasion, Arun Chawla stated that, “India today has the potential to become a global manufacturing hub. However, widespread smuggling and counterfeiting, in the absence of an adequate enforcement mechanism to stop it, can act as a dampener in achieving this goal.”
FICCI’s Committee Against Smuggling and Counterfeiting Activities Destroying the Economy (CASCADE), over the years, has been actively focusing on curbing the problem of growing illicit trade in smuggled, pass-offs and counterfeit goods.
https://bureaucracytoday.com/latestnews.aspx?id=183145
Lear MoreIllicit trade, an invisible enemy: MP S Dev
“Tax evasion needs to be seen as an anti-national act and illicit trade should be treated as a national threat,” stated Sushmita Dev, Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha.
She further emphasized on the need for a national agency to take over to stop the menace of illicit trade at the event that organized by FICCI CASCADE on the ‘Impact of Illicit Trade on Industry, Economy and Consumers’ on Wednesday.
While addressing the occasion, Arun Chawla stated that, “India today has the potential to become a global manufacturing hub. However, widespread smuggling and counterfeiting, in the absence of an adequate enforcement mechanism to stop it, can act as a dampener in achieving this goal.”
FICCI’s Committee Against Smuggling and Counterfeiting Activities Destroying the Economy (CASCADE), over the years, has been actively focusing on curbing the problem of growing illicit trade in smuggled, pass-offs and counterfeit goods.
https://bureaucracytoday.com/latestnews.aspx?id=183145
Lear MoreIllinois Men Plead Guilty to Smuggling Untaxed Tobacco Products Into Minnesota
The Washington County Attorney’s Office has reached plea agreements with a pair of Illinois men accused of aiding and abetting the sale of untaxed tobacco, the Minnesota Department of Revenue announced in a release Wednesday.
Mohammad A.M. Abdul Majid of Bridgeview, Illinois, and Iman Gencehan Ugurlu of Oak Lawn, Illinois will each receive five years probation and have agreed to pay the state more than $74,000 in restitution.
The release states the charges stem from a traffic stop by the state patrol in which the men were reported to have been found in possession of more than $78,000 worth of untaxed tobacco products. According to the release, that was the largest known seizure of such products in state history.
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Ombudsman: Some 40% of all tobacco products sold in Russia are counterfeit
About 35-40 percent of tobacco products sold on the Russian market are illegally produced, Russian business ombudsman Boris Titov said in an annual report to the Russian president, TASS reports.
“According to most cautious estimates, the share of illegal products has already reached 35-40 percent, which deals a serious blow to the budget of the Russian Federation, not to mention the quality of the falsified products and the scope of illegal production,” the report reads.
The business ombudsman suggested creating a unified state mechanism to control the tobacco market, similar to the Unified State Automatic Information System for alcohol products (EGAIS), developed by the Department for State Regulation of Economy and the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.
Lear MoreFake goods on the rise in India; illicit trade increases 44% in two years, new report shows
A study from the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in India has revealed that the trade of fake goods in the country rocketed from 2011-2012 to 2013-2014. This confirmation that illicit goods are a pervasive part of the Indian economy – estimated to be between 8% and 15% of the country’s total gross domestic product (GDP) – serves as a stark reminder that the global trademark community urgently needs to focus awareness and enforcement efforts in the region.
The research was released by FICCI’s Committee Against Smuggling and Counterfeiting Activities Destroying Economy (CASCADE), which was set up in 2011 to explicitly address the growing illicit trade being witnessed in India. The primary aims of the committee are to generate awareness on the hazardous impact of counterfeit products in the country and to assist law enforcement agencies, including judges, the police and customs officials, in the fight against fakes. However, research evidencing the scale of the problem has also been a focus and its recent study, as well as a letter subsequently sent to the government, highlights a number of startling findings.
http://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/Blog/detail.aspx?g=5ac8d016-2fb8-4663-9319-b3142131a9f2
Lear MoreCombating Sale of Counterfeit and Falsified Medicines Online: A Losing Battle
The rapid growth of technology has transformed many brick-and-mortar businesses into online businesses, and medicines are now being sold over the internet. Influenced by the notions that online purchases are economical and do not require a prescription, the general public are keen to purchase medicine online through websites, social media and mobile apps. Online medicine purchase is presumed to be convenient and confidential, free from embarrassment of sharing personal and sensitive health information to a healthcare professional. Public in United States, Europe, Australia is generally aware that internet sales form part of the official medicines distribution channels, often a valid prescription is required for controlled medicine. However, unlicensed, substandard and falsified medicines with various dubious medical claims are advertised and sold illegally in many rogue online pharmacies (Jack, 2016). These include medications for weight loss, hair growth, and treatment of erectile dysfunction. Such medicines are termed as substandard, spurious, falsely labeled, falsified and counterfeit medical products by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Similarly, the European Commission defines such products as falsified medicines or fake medicines that pass themselves off as real, authorized medicines (European Commission, 2016). These medicines may contain substandard active ingredients, which are low quality and/or an incorrect amount, either too high or too low, and have not been properly evaluated by authorities in terms of quality, safety, and efficacy. It must be noted that falsified medicines are often confused with counterfeit medicines. According to European Commission, counterfeit medicines refers to medicines that do not comply with European Union law on intellectual and industrial property rights, for example, unregistered medicines sourced from parallel import (European Medicines Agency1). In this article, the illegal sales of both counterfeit and falsified medicines (CFMs) are discussed.
In 2012, the WHO estimated the CFMs industry to be worth USD 431 billion a year, but further estimates has not been reported in the recent years due to the fast growing, widespread practice of this industry, making it impractical to estimate on a global scale (Garrett,
2012). Authorities are finding it difficult to curb CFMs due to the lack of governance over the internet. Furthermore, fragmented cybercrime legislation leads to large substantive and procedural lacunae in law, rendering law enforcement efforts useless.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5432535/
Lear MoreRecord smuggling attempt thwarted in Poland
A record smuggling attempt of nine tonnes of tobacco was thwarted when Polish police found the contraband, worth PLN 5.5 million (EUR 1.2 million), in tins labelled as dog food.
The shipment was destined for Germany and was intercepted by police at the Polish-Slovak border crossing in Barwinek, southeastern Poland.
A Polish truck driver said he was transporting cans of dog food from Bulgaria to Germany, according to police.
But police found the cans were filled with tobacco from the UAE, intended for smoking in hookah water pipes. The driver has been detained.
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Fake cosmetics worth $100m seized in crackdown.
Almost 70 tonnes of fake cosmetics have been seized and three business owners detained in an ongoing crackdown by the Interior Ministry’s Counter Counterfeit Committee.
Meach Sophanna, undersecretary of state and chairman of the committee, said the crackdown was intended to protect the public from harmful products that risked their health.
“This has been an historical operation that has uncovered a huge number of fake products in our country,” Mr Sophanna said.
There have been several big arrests since the crackdown begun.
Chinese national Mao Li Jun was apprehended in Kandal province’s Takhmao city on March 31.
Officers confiscated 30 tonnes of fake Shiseido cosmetics and charged him with selling fake goods.
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/38158/fake-cosmetics-worth–100m-seized-in-crackdown/
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Counterfeit, smuggled cigarettes thriving in India
The illicit market in smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes is thriving in India, so much so that industry reports have claimed that the consumption of such cigarettes increased by 90% last year. Several studies conducted by the industry and frequent seizures at sea ports and airports have revealed that 17 billion cigarette sticks are smuggled into India each year. These much cheaper, smuggled and contraband cigarettes, which according to a FICCI study have doubled in the past one decade, cost a huge revenue loss to the national exchequer every year (over Rs 9,000 crore in 2015), apart from undermining the government’s campaign against smoking by making cigarettes increasingly expensive.
According to Euromonitor International, illegal cigarettes in India have more than doubled, having increased to 23.9 billion sticks in 2015 from 11.1 billion sticks in 2004, making India the fourth largest illegal cigarette market in the world and clearly a preferred destination for international cigarette smugglers.
http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/9347-counterfeit-smuggled-cigarettes-thriving-india
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Cambodia seizes 68 tonnes of fake cosmetic products
Cambodian authorities have confiscated 68 tonnes of fake cosmetic products that purported to be made in countries like Japan and South Korea, an official said, calling it the country’s largest bust of counterfeit make-up.
The cosmetics included bottles of hair dye, skin-whitening creams and shampoo worth “millions of dollars”, said Meach Sophana, the head of government’s counterfeit committee.
The goods were produced locally but labelled as products made in countries like Japan, South Korea, China, the US, Germany and Thailand, said Meach Sophana.
Some of the cosmetics had fake branding from the luxury Japanese skin care firm Shiseido, he added.
“This is a huge quantity in the history of counterfeit crackdowns in our country,” the official told reporters.
http://news.mb.com.ph/2017/05/09/cambodia-seizes-68-tonnes-of-fake-cosmetic-products/
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