FAKE CIGARETTES HAUL – EU COUNTERFEITS ‘OPERATION FAKE’
November 1st, 2005
BY DEIRDRE MASONA EUROPEAN Union (EU)-wide customs initiative has netted two huge hauls of fake branded cigarettes smuggled in from China. The consignments, totalling more than 17,203,000 cigarettes, were seized at Belgium's major port, Antwerp, during a two-week exercise involving customs authorities, the EU anti-fraud office, OLAF, and the European Commission's taxation and customs directorate. This compares with the 26,904,000 fake and pirated cigarettes seized across the EU during the first quarter of 2004 in 216 separate instances.Although the FAKE exercise ...
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