News
FAKES - Fighting Against brand counterfeiting in three Key European member states
Towards a more comprehensive strategy
June 2009. A new project to counter the phenomenon of counterfeiting on the three new EU Member States has been awarded European Commission to Transcrime, UNICRI and GACG Awarded by the EC for 2009 and 2010.
New EU Member States play a crucial role for the transit of counterfeited goods, but this illicit activity is often neglected by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) because it is considered as a “second class” offence. Even though, the huge profits deriving from this crime and the relatively low risk of apprehension for criminals, make counterfeiting a very lucrative market for organised crime.
In addition, a lack of (national and transnational) coordination among LEAs of EU Member States hampers an effective tackling of the phenomenon.
Project FAKES will focus on three new EU Member States: Czech Republic, Poland and Romania because of their key role of external border countries and transit nations for counterfeited products.
In detail, these objectives will be reached:
- identification of existing standards and best practices regarding investigation/prosecution, assets recovery, and return in counterfeiting cases in the EU countries (research);
- elaboration of an operative toolkit backed upon the identified best practices and addressed to Judicial Authority (JA), Legal Practicioners (LP), LEAs and other Public Officials (oPO) in the three selected countries in order to provide them with a more effective instrument to tackle the phenomenon (toolkit);
- Training of JA, LP, LEAs and oPO of the selected countries relying on the expertise of the partners and on the abovementioned toolkit (training).
The project will last 24 months and will involve the following partners:
- Transcrime – Joint research centre on transnational crime, Università degli Studi di Trento – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano;
- GACG – Global Anti-Counterfeiting Network;
- UNICRI – United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute.
Final outputs of the project will be:
- research report on best practices regarding investigation/prosecution, assets recovery, and return in counterfeiting cases in the EU countries;
- operative toolkit for the training of LEAs personnel;
- training of 40 JA, LP, LEAs and oPO in each of the three selected countries.
June 2009. A new project to counter the phenomenon of counterfeiting on the three new EU Member States has been awarded European Commission to Transcrime, UNICRI and GACG Awarded by the EC for 2009 and 2010.
New EU Member States play a crucial role for the transit of counterfeited goods, but this illicit activity is often neglected by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) because it is considered as a “second class” offence. Even though, the huge profits deriving from this crime and the relatively low risk of apprehension for criminals, make counterfeiting a very lucrative market for organised crime.
In addition, a lack of (national and transnational) coordination among LEAs of EU Member States hampers an effective tackling of the phenomenon.
Project FAKES will focus on three new EU Member States: Czech Republic, Poland and Romania because of their key role of external border countries and transit nations for counterfeited products.
In detail, these objectives will be reached:
- identification of existing standards and best practices regarding investigation/prosecution, assets recovery, and return in counterfeiting cases in the EU countries (research);
- elaboration of an operative toolkit backed upon the identified best practices and addressed to Judicial Authority (JA), Legal Practicioners (LP), LEAs and other Public Officials (oPO) in the three selected countries in order to provide them with a more effective instrument to tackle the phenomenon (toolkit);
- Training of JA, LP, LEAs and oPO of the selected countries relying on the expertise of the partners and on the abovementioned toolkit (training).
The project will last 24 months and will involve the following partners:
- Transcrime – Joint research centre on transnational crime, Università degli Studi di Trento – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano;
- GACG – Global Anti-Counterfeiting Network;
- UNICRI – United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute.
Final outputs of the project will be:
- research report on best practices regarding investigation/prosecution, assets recovery, and return in counterfeiting cases in the EU countries;
- operative toolkit for the training of LEAs personnel;
- training of 40 JA, LP, LEAs and oPO in each of the three selected countries.