On the occasion of World Anti-Counterfeiting Day on 30 June 2017, the annual report on counterfeit goods seizures carried out by national law enforcement agencies and the Inland Revenue Office in Spain in 2016 was presented at the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office.
In 2016, a total of over 4 million counterfeit products were seized in Spain. Those products would have reached a market value of almost 780 million Euros. Police operations carried out by the Civil Guard and the National Police Department, as well as the Local Police Forces, which send data to the Crime Statistics System (SEC), amounted to 1,447 and led to the confiscation of 1.6 million counterfeit items which would have reached a value of over 700 million Euros on the illegal market. Of that figure, almost 590 million refers to jewellery and watches, almost 38.4 million to the clothing sector and almost 21.2 million to leather goods and accessories.
The police seizures were carried out in the following locations in descending order: 43.68% in industrial units/factories/warehouses; 23.28% at private addresses and 20.85 % on public thoroughfares.
As regards Autonomous Communities, most operations were carried out in Andalusia with 464 seizures and a total of almost 408,000 seized products. Next was the Community of Valencia with 208 seizures and a total of 380,622 seized products. Third was the Community of Madrid with 175 seizures and 367,234 seized products, followed by Catalonia with 172 seizures and almost 190,000 seized products.
During the celebration of World Anti-Counterfeiting Day, it was shown how this kind of criminal activity destroys over 67,000 direct jobs in Spain each year and causes a loss in sales of over 7 million Euros. Special focus was placed on the need for consumers to be aware of the problem and to buy responsibly from law-abiding traders who generate employment and wealth.
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Not only in Spain counterfeiting is there every corner of the world, there are some private measures taken to get rid of this, but it was not effective, there is 40% of fake products in FMCG industry and 20% of road accident is due to fake products in automobile industry, there are fake pharma products in market also, which should be stopped.