Operation ‘Renacer-II’

• In this operation, 177,227 falsified items were seized 

• The counterfeited goods were found in 9 containers in Algeciras

 

March 7, 2016.- The Tax Agency, in collaboration with the Civil Guard, has proceeded to seize counterfeit goods in the course of the operation, called 'Renacer-II', in a total of 177,227 items valued at 9,030,898 euros.

This is the second-largest seizure carried out under the direction of the Tax Agency, after the operation “Renacer” carried out last year, which confiscated eleven containers with counterfeit items valued at 17,520,190 euros. In 2008, also in Algeciras, 231,000 articles found in 6 containers were confiscated.

This action, in terms of evaluation of the goods seized, represents only 7% of the false products confiscated by the Agency throughout 2015 and 35% of the items seized in Andalusia.

The operation was carried out by the Risk Analysis Unit (UAR) of the Customs Office of Algeciras, consisting of Customs Surveillance Officers of the Tax Agency and members of the Civil Guard.

Searches were conducted during the course of the habitual customs inspections of goods entering the Customs Territory of the European Union.

As a result of the analysis of information generated by the flow of goods and on the basis of the risk profiles defined by the Tax Agency, various suspicious containers originating from China with declared destinations in various African countries were earmarked for inspection. The officials and civil guards of the Customs Office of Algeciras opened the nine selected containers and found in them the allegedly falsified goods.

The facts were communicated to the holders of the protected industrial property rights, in accordance with the established procedure in the European Union rules, in order for them to certify the falsehood of the products. The same facts were reported to the Duty Court of Algeciras with a view to the corresponding judicial proceedings.

With regard to the distribution of the seizure by groups of products, clothing and perfumery items were the most notable.

In terms of the value of the seized products, the most significant group is clothing items, totalling an estimated value of almost 5.5 million euros, signifying 60% of the total.

	UNITS	VALUE
PERFUMERY AND PERSONAL HYGIENE	82,544	1,735,098
FOOTWEAR	15,697	1,664,680
CLOTHING	72,526	5,430,120
HANDBAGS AND ACCESSORIES	6,460	201,000
TOTAL	177,227	9,030,898

Fight against piracy

The fight against falsification and piracy is one of the main areas of investigation of the Tax Agency, which combats the risk to consumers of counterfeited items and the unfair competition which they cause for the corporate sector.

Aware of the serious economic and social damage that the falsification business constitutes, the Tax Agency fraud control annual plan considers one of its priorities the full control of the import and sale of goods, in order to break up possible black market circuits.

Therefore the Tax Agency carries out a risk profile analysis of all national imports taking into account to the country of origin, type of product, acting parties and many other characteristics of the commercial operation.