Spoilt for choice. The days when 7 out of 10 companies falling victim to counterfeiters were in the luxury goods industry are long gone

The days when 7 out of 10 companies falling victim to counterfeiters were in the luxury goods industry are long gone. Everything has changed in the past 20 years.

Anything that can be bought and sold is now being counterfeited: soup, mineral water, breast implants, contact lenses, toothpaste, sweets, jam, pharmaceutical products for treating life-threatening conditions such as breast cancer and high blood pressure, pacemakers, baby milk, weapons of war, automobile brake disc pads, etc. There have been big changes in the nature of counterfeit and pirated goods, but the same can be said of the techniques developed by criminal organizations to transport these goods to their ultimate destinations. In fact the modus operandi used to move counterfeit goods is the same as that used to transport drugs. Direct carriage from the country of production to the point of consumption is virtually unheard of these days.

Today, counterfeit goods will cross several borders, or even several continents, passing from port to port and from airport to airport, changing ships or changing planes, using free zones and sometimes even switching transport documents or containers. All this subterfuge has one main priority: to conceal the true origin of the goods and thereby avoid attracting the attention of Customs and other border control services. This technique, commonly known as transshipment or break-bulk transit, is very widespread nowadays, and Customs services have had to adapt their control methods, shifting their focus away from the origin of the suspect goods to the point of dispatch.