Massive destruction of counterfeit watches

Spectacular destruction of two tonnes of pharmaceuticals and 15,000 counterfeit watches. With these arresting images, the Stop Piracy association and the FH invite consumers to reflect on the risks associated with the purchase of counterfeit products. Pharmaceuticals, watches, fashion goods and music, computer programs, audio accessories etc., over the years, this scourge has spread to every branch of industry. In its active fight against counterfeiting, the FH contributed to the watch side of this event.

For over seven years now, Stop Piracy has been engaged in the fight to prevent counterfeiting and piracy. Advertising campaigns, massive destruction actions, articles in the media, personalised advice, the association makes constant efforts to convince the public that every purchase of counterfeit products of any kind whatsoever is a serious offence which jeopardises the industry concerned. The watch industry is severely affected as too is the pharmaceutical branch, the audio-visual and mobile phone sectors, textiles, the automotive industry and even toothbrushes… no sector is spared. Consumers’ safety and health are being placed at serious risk.  

The scale of the counterfeit trade is very hard to evaluate but it must certainly amount to several billion francs (250 billion a year estimated by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD). The criminals who control counterfeiting maximise their profits by stealing ideas, copying research outcomes, flouting social security, taking no notice of directives concerning quality and environmental criteria etc. Only recently, 1,080,000 counterfeit Xanax tablets (an anxiolytic) were seized at Zurich Airport where they were in transit. If these pharmaceuticals are wrongly dosed or contain dangerous substances, they obviously place the user’s health at risk.  Equally risky are counterfeit brakes or tyres fitted on cars with complete impunity.

With the same vehemence as Stop Piracy, the FH wages an unrelenting war against counterfeiting in the field and on the Internet which has become an important vehicle for the distribution of this type of illegal product. On the web, the FH intervenes to halt auction sales of counterfeit watches, 250,000 of which were stopped in 2013. Every year, it also closes down thousands of sites offering unlawful products for sale. To help the local authorities – police force and customs – in their preventive work, the FH organises training seminars in many countries. Recently, it visited Thailand, China, Dubai, Cambodia, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Portugal. It performs expert appraisals and analyses of the copies that have been seized in order to retain proof and identify the counterfeit movements. The FH destroys around one million counterfeit timepieces every year.

In order to promote public awareness of counterfeiting, Stop Piracy has launched an advertising campaign presenting the members of a fictitious family, the Fragnières (or Flückigers for the German-speaking part of Switzerland and Filippinis for the Italian-speaking Ticino). The mother buys pharmaceuticals on the Internet, the father falls for a counterfeit watch while the son downloads computer programs and the daughter buys fashion goods. These persons clearly stand for the man or woman in the street who acts without really knowing whether or not what they are doing is legal, while imagining that they are causing harm to no one. By placing an order on the computer, the consumer believes that he or she remains hidden, anonymous and sheltered from illegality.

When the product destruction operation took place on 21 October last, two tonnes of pharmaceuticals were poured into a container in preparation for their destruction in an approved factory while some 15,000 counterfeit watches seized either individually or in bulk were repeatedly crushed by a steam roller. Stop Piracy and the FH hope that the image left behind by these deformed, broken and shattered timepieces will create an awareness among all the "Fragnières" in Switzerland and encourage them to think twice before making their next purchase on the net or while they are on holiday abroad.

October 31, 2014