BY MICHAEL BRESLIN
A joint, pre-planned operation, led by the Police, at Clogher Mart, near Newtownbutler resulted in the seizure of an estimated £600,000 worth of counterfeit goods.
The fake items, many of which carried leading brand names, including Gucci (sunglasses) and Rolex (watches) along with branded Premier Division tops, were taken from a number of stalls.
Such was the quantity of the haul that a Police van had to do a shuttle service to carry them away after each item was painstakingly logged and bagged.
The Inspector leading the operation told the 'Herald' that, acting on intelligence, his team intended to target two or three stalls, no more than that: "But, what we came upon was a veritable Aladdin's Cave".
The counterfeit items also included Russian-made DVDs, some of which carried eight films and none of which bore an age category classification. Two officers from the Federation Against Copyright Theft carried off around 1,200 DVDs which, normally, retail for £10 a disc but which the stall holder was selling for £5 each or 8 euro.
The Inspector stressed that the majority of the stalls were OK, and said his team had received great cooperation from both other stallholders and customers: "They're glad to see us seizing property from fake ones, and we had people coming up to us and telling us, 'I don't think that stall has genuine stuff, and they're pointing out things to us. It is amazing the support for the Police.
'Not one has said a bad word to us. They don't mind. They just want to see the boy who is not genuine rooted out of here".
But, he had harsh words for that minority of stallholders who, by selling goods with fake brand names at knockdown prices were not only selling the public sub-standard products but were also putting people out of business.
"People think they're buying the genuine article, but they're not, and it's affecting Border shops in particular. They're closing because they can't compete. The real victim, I would say are the people in the Border community because it's affecting long-established family businesses. They're finding people are no longer coming into their shops because they can go to the market".
He said fake goods, and their sale, were depriving people of jobs and the government of tax, and described those selling counterfeit goods as being, 'part of an organised crime racket'.
"We have people who have genuine stalls and they're making an honest day's living, but there are people here who are hell-bent on ripping off the customer".
Interestingly, Saturday's raid coincides with the launch of the 2007 annual Report of the Organised Crime Task Force. It charts the success of the Task Force's partners (the PSNI, HM Revenue and Customs, and the Assets Recovery Agency) against organised crime.
Under the section headed, 'Intellectual Property Crime', which deals with counterfeit goods, it is estimated that for the year April 2006 until March 2007, just over £3m was seized in coordinated raids. Film (DVDs etc) tops the charts at almost £1m, then music, equipment, cigarettes and clothes. Fake perfumes and sunglasses netted £69,000 and watches just over £66,000.
The Report records that in one raid in October last year, £40,000 worth of counterfeit clothing, DVDs and CDs together with £2,000 worth of fireworks and cash were seized at Clogher Market.
As a result, two people from the Irish Republic were arrested and charged under the Trade Mark Act 1994.
The Inspector explained that he had ordered his team not to make any arrests on Saturday so as not to disrupt the running of the market by the genuine stall holders. However, those stallholders who owned the goods that were seized had been identified and would be interviewed later.
