France takes on counterfeits ahead of Olympics
STORY: Alongside the athletes and sports fans, Paris 2024 is also attracting the usual wave of unofficial and counterfeit merchandize.
According to the International Olympic Committee, the most faked products are clothing, and items featuring the mascot.
Paris 2024 organizers and the IOC have both joined French brand protection group UNIFAB - which has had some success, according to its head Delphine Sarfati-Sobreira.
"“We’ve been working a lot ahead of the Olympic Games, there were a lot of operations carried out, with training over almost 18 months for operational agents, the police, customs, the gendarmerie, fraud prevention. And there were big, major operations, like a few weeks ago, the closure of more than 10 stores in the Saint-Ouen area, which is 500 meters from the Olympic village. Thousands of fake products were seized, to really clean up this area where there were a lot of counterfeits in circulation."
In total, 63,000 items of clothing, shoes, and leather goods were confiscated and destroyed, and ten people arrested in that one raid.
And the problem is not just Olympic fakes.
Visitors to France often seek out luxury goods from brands like Louis Vuitton and Chanel - with those who cannot afford the real thing possibly tempted by cheaper fakes.
In recent years, the authorities have dialled up their efforts to stem the flow of counterfeit goods.
Customs seized 20.5 million counterfeit products in 2023, a 78% increase on the 11.5 million confiscated in 2022.
"Criminals who know that counterfeiting brings huge returns with little investment also engage in other illegal activities such as arms trafficking, prostitution, human trafficking, etc. So, people should know that buying a counterfeit also means financing major trafficking or even terrorism."
UNIFAB has also opened a museum to help educate people on the big business of luxury fake items.
Counterfeit branded clothing alone cost companies in France an estimated average of $1.83 billion in lost sales each year between 2018 and 2021, that's according to the European Union Intellectual Property Office.
The crackdown has drawn some criticism though, with accusations that informal market sellers of legal secondhand goods have been caught up in the operation against counterfeiters and petty crime in the Paris suburbs.
Police did not respond to a request for comment.
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