A clandestine manufacturing unit churning out as much as 4 million counterfeit bottles yearly has been dismantled by Catalan police, Spanish authorities stated on Tuesday, February 17.
Seven individuals had been arrested and 11 others positioned beneath investigation on suspicion of belonging to a felony group, smuggling, and infringing industrial property rights. The community allegedly counterfeited perfumes from greater than 50 manufacturers.
Though the operation was uncovered in October, the arrests and searches had been carried out on February 8 as a part of a large-scale operation involving Spanish and French customs authorities and the Mossos d’Esquadra (Catalan police), in line with a press launch.
Authorities seized over 1.2 million counterfeit merchandise from three warehouses close to Girona, simply south of the French border. Based mostly on the retail value of genuine items, their estimated worth exceeds EUR 94 million.
Seven manufacturing traces
The manufacturing unit — described as “the most important counterfeit fragrance manufacturing unit uncovered in Europe thus far” — had seven manufacturing traces, in addition to sufficient uncooked supplies to supply 150,000 litres of varied fragrances.
The community was extremely organized, overseeing each stage of manufacturing — from storage and labelling to packaging — and was geared up with all the mandatory equipment, together with printing plates for the outer containers.
Officers seized greater than 850,000 counterfeit perfumes at one warehouse and an additional 350,000 at one other web site. Additionally they confiscated the complete vary of manufacturing tools, together with bottles, caps, spray pumps and packaging supplies.
The alert got here from French customs, which, after intercepting a number of thousand counterfeit bottles in containers labeled “very fragile,” notified their Spanish counterparts. Subsequent surveillance uncovered a trafficking community delivery the products to France and different European nations utilizing vans and vans registered in Romania and elsewhere.
