When Russian president has mentioned his concerns about the scales of counterfeits in Russian light industry, the Prosecutor General’s office has reported its achievements and statistics demonstrating what has been done. According to office it was revealed 19 thousands violations of law, including organization of illegal migration and violations of rules in the field of public procurement.
As a reaction to mentioned violations the office has made more than 3 thousands notifications to custom and enforcement authorities and also to market participants running their business unfairly. More than 6 thousands administrative and 44 criminal cases have been initiated. Approximately 6 thousands natural persons have been brought to justice (administrative and disciplinary responsibility). It is the first time when a Russian enforcement authorities simultaneously and together fight with counterfeits.
“In all subjects of our country the exchange of information with enforcement, customs and supervising authorities has been organized. It is established interaction with representatives of rights holders, the formats of joint actions also have been defined,” – stated representative of Prosecutor General’s Office Alexandr Kurennoy. “It was made a lot of work to stop distribution of products across the Russian state borders,” – he added.
According to office the most active distribution of counterfeits is organized in Internet. Prosecutors work to close more than 800 informational resources where counterfeited products are available for sale. Very often for manufacturing of counterfeited products migrants are recruited. But in such cases a criminal cases are initiated because of illegal immigration, but not for copyright or trademark infringement. Experts from Russian high school of economy evaluate the turnover of counterfeits – it is about 2.5 billions of Roubles.
It was also reported about huge operation of Russian enforcement authorities. They have found a big manufacturer of clothes under labels of world-wide famous brands. Certainly this production was illegal. More than 15 thousands of square meters were reserved for production capacity and storing of counterfeits. The counterfeited products are evaluated approximately in 300 million Roubles.