International business leaders determine work programme to combat piracy and counterfeiting
ICC Secretary General John Danilovich presided over a meeting of the Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP) Steering Committee, held at the Unilever Headquarters in London on 22-23 October 2014.
BASCAP member companies, comprising intellectual property (IP) rights holders from the food, electronics, personal care, clothing, tobacco products, movie, music and software industries outlined their work plan for 2015, during the meeting.
The group committed to engage with national governments to elevate efforts to strengthen IP enforcement regimes though the production of country reports highlighting the value of IP, raising awareness of the economic and social risks stemming from counterfeiting and piracy and by promoting recommendations for improving IP enforcement.
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Cigarette Smuggling Into Vietnam on the Rise
The smuggling of illegal cigarettes from Cambodia into Vietnam is on the rise, according to recent Vietnamese media reports, which names one of the most-smuggled brands as Hero—distributed in Cambodia by prominent CPP lawmaker Ly Yong Phat.
On Monday, VietnamNet, an online news site in Vietnam—where media outlets are strictly regulated by the communist government—quoted Pham Kien Nghiep, the secretary-general of the Vietnam Tobacco Association, as saying that the number of smugglers along the Cambodian-Vietnamese border has risen drastically this year.
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/business/cigarette-smuggling-into-vietnam-on-the-rise-70853/
Lear MoreGlad tidings for tobacco firms, smokers
Two players drive the global tobacco industry – the legal and the illegal players. While the former group comprised the registered corporate entities that have known addresses, business structures and employees, who pay the appropriate taxes and comply with laws of the different countries in which they operate, the latter group is unknown and cannot be regulated. Examples of the legal players in the country are the British American Tobacco Nigeria, International Tobacco Company, Ilorin, and Leaf Tobacco, Kaduna.
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I Spent A Day With A Guy Selling Illegal Cigarettes On The Streets Of New York
It’s a cloudy and cool September morning on Staten Island when I make my way to Bay Street looking for someone to sell me illegal cigarettes. I don’t smoke, but ever since Eric Garner’s haunting death here a few months ago after the police approached him for selling “loosies”—individual, untaxed cigarettes—I’ve wanted to know how easy it is to find someone who will sell me illegal smokes on the street.
As I walk into a bodega across from Tompkinsville Park, which sits a couple of blocks from the Staten Island Ferry terminal, a tall, dark-skinned man overhears my conversation with the owner and offers me a pack of “Newps,” or Newports, for eight dollars. He tells me his name is Debo Lato. He’s 51 and his “office” is just outside the bodega, right in front of the spot where Garner was killed on July 17.
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Countering the counterfeiters: The art of making money
Legend has it that when the surrealist painter Salvador Dali had to pay for an expensive restaurant meal he would twizzle his famous mustache and arch his eyebrows before beguiling his host into letting him dine for free.
The crafty Catalan, it is said, would write out a check for the required amount and sign on the dotted line. Just before handing the payment over, however, he would pull the piece of paper back and pen an elaborate doodle on the opposite side.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/22/business/countering-the-counterfeiters-art-money/
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Project O-Neptune nets three arrests
CORNWALL, Ontario – Law enforcement in the Cornwall area say a sting operation has led to the arrest of a trio of Cornwallites involved with cross-border contraband tobacco smuggling this past summer. The Cornwall Regional Task Force – Serious and Organized Crime (CRTF-SOC) team said David Frank Delormier, 32, Nathaniel Lee Gatien, 28, and Micheal Mark Durocher, 29, face charges Wednesday, after investigators concluded Project O-Neptune.
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Manager of Springfield tobacco sales warehouse admits role in $43 million scheme to deprive government of excise taxes
SPRINGFIELD — A tobacco wholesaler who ran a warehouse in this city pleaded guilty to trafficking smokeless tobacco products, as part of a larger interstate cigar and tobacco smuggling ring that robbed the government of $43 million in excise taxes.
Jaspal Singh, of Seymour, Conn., is an immigrant from India and faces deportation in addition to a maximum of five years in prison. He struck a plea deal that will include potentially testifying against the man prosecutors say was the ringleader: Syed I. Bokhari, of Middletown, Conn.
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/10/manager_of_springfield_tobacco.html
Lear MoreEgyptian man faces tobacco smuggling charges
An Egyptian man is facing smuggling charges after being caught at Larnaca Airport with 63kg of Hookah tobacco. According to the police, Tarek Fathalla Elsayed Menesy was arrested following a flight from Egypt on Friday after customs officials found 82 packets of tobacco in his suitcases. The tobacco would have lost the government some €13,000 in tax revenues if it was successfully smuggled onto the market.
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Patients sue clinics, distributor over falsified spinal implants
Dozens of people in the US have filed lawsuits against an equipment distributor and several healthcare facilities for using unapproved implants in spinal surgery.
The lawsuits centre on spinal implants distributed by now-defunct Spinal Solutions LLC to clinics, and paints a picture of an organised fraudulent network fuelled by kickbacks given in exchange for patient referrals to spinal surgeons.
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Out of control smuggling has tobacco farmers worried
Farmer Nguyen Van Sau in the southern province of Tay Ninh’s Ben Cau District is relieved that it has been a profitable year for tobacco farmers, as the crop has fed his family and hundreds of others for decades. Still, Sau and other farmers are increasingly concerned about the rapid increase in cigarette smuggling along Tay Ninh’s long border with Cambodia.
“Smuggled cigarettes are bad for our business, and they lower our tobacco prices,” he told Viet Nam News.
Pham Kien Nghiep, general secretary of the Viet Nam Tobacco Association (VAT), said the number of smugglers had risen greatly due to the huge profits. In fact, the smuggling of cigarettes in Viet Nam is far worse than most people realise. In a survey conducted in 2012 by the Oxford Economics Department and the US-based International Tax and Investment Centre, the country ranked second in Asia in the number of smuggled cigarettes.
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