News

Handbags, Legos among more than $500K in fake goods seized at Houston-Galveston seaport

Expensive handbags and children’s toys were among the hundreds of phony items from a shipment seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers working at the Houston-Galveston seaport. The more than 200 counterfeit handbags and nearly 50 packages of plastic building blocks had an estimated retail price of more than $500,000. The items were seized on Sept. 29.

“Intercepting counterfeit goods protects the trademark holder, the unsuspecting consumer, and strengthens the U.S. economy,” said Houston CBP Area Port Director Dave Fluty. “Import safety and protecting intellectual property rights are priority trade issues. We will take every opportunity to intercept counterfeit goods entering through this port.”

http://world.einnews.com/article/227286457/iOeW-OiP4joRWxQG

Canada’s combating counterfeit products legislation nears passage

On October 2, 2014, Bill C-8, the Combating Counterfeit Products Act, passed the House of Commons, and proceeded to a first reading in the Senate. Originally introduced in March 2013 as Bill C-56, and re-introduced during the current session on October 28, 2013, the Combating Counterfeit Products Act is intended to give trademark and copyright owners additional options for dealing with the importation and sale of counterfeit goods. In announcing the passage of the Bill to the Senate, Minister Moore commented the Act will “give our border guards the tools they need to work with Canadian rights holders to stop illegal counterfeit goods from entering the country”.

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=90131632-1582-43b8-b7d1-f871d7b0c8aa

Cigarette Smuggling and Cyber Security: Low-Tech Crimes Fund High-Tech Threats

You may not connect the cheap cigarettes sold under the counter (or out of a trunk, bodega or by a street vendor) with the mysterious charges on your credit card that you don’t remember making or the cash that has, somehow, just disappeared from your bank account. You also may not connect that website selling cheap cigarettes made in second and third world countries with Shellshock or whatever the fashionably scary cyber-threat of the day is when you’re reading this. But the Russian mafia and other Transnational Criminal Organizations and Foreign Terrorist Organizations understand the connections quite well. Criminals around the world know that tobacco trafficking is a lucrative, low risk way of raising cash that can be used to fund narcotics deals, arms smuggling, human trafficking and, more recently, the theft of credit card and banking data.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20141002_cigarette_smuggling_cyber_security_low_tech_crimes_fund_high_tech/

Renewed clampdown against rice smuggling

AS part of measures to successfully tackle rice smuggling, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has acquired Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC) and fine-tuned its security strategy. Under the new approach, the NCS is to place more emphasis on intelligence gathering, security of its personnel and “take the battle to the door steps of smugglers”.

Vietnam appeases Big Tobacco with toothless taxes

Vietnam’s latest bid to raise its tobacco taxes will do little to curb consumption because it fails to hit the country’s die-hard smokers where they hurt most – their pockets, health groups say. At a meeting of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly – Vietnam’s legislature – on Thursday, Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung put forth a proposal to raise the excise tax on tobacco from 65 percent to 70 percent in January 2016 and 75 percent in 2019.

The finance ministry said the 2010 Global Adult Tobacco Survey found that around 15.3 million people actively smoke in Vietnam, exposing an estimated 46.8 million, mostly women and children, to secondhand smoke. Smoking caused around 40,000 deaths in Vietnam in 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, which warned that this figure could surge to 70,000 by the end of 2030 if drastic measures are not taken.