'Fake DVDs made by slaves'
FAKE DVDs sold in Northern Ireland are produced by people held against their will in the international web of organised crime, the PSNI has revealed.
That was the message from Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris in a recent briefing to the public accounts committee, which this week published its resulting report on organised crime.
In addition, the PSNI warned MLAs that the Italian mafia has been selling fake chainsaws door-to-door around the province and that counterfeit iPods, which may explode, are also being sold.
In the same week, the Organised Crime Task Force (OCTF) published its annual report. Justice Minister David Ford revealed that in 2009/10 it recovered 4.2 million of criminal assets; seized 9 million of illegal drugs; 1.5 million of counterfeit goods, over one million litres of illicit fuel and rescued 25 human trafficking victims.
"Organised criminals will use every opportunity, will go to any length, to make money off the backs of this community," he said. "They are determined, violent and ruthless. They are prepared to endanger life and steal property, to smuggle fuel and traffick people, to use blackmail, kidnap and weapons."
The Assembly's public accounts committee's chairman, Paul Maskey MLA, said the public purse is being undermined when we can least afford it.
Organised crime is a form of fraud that goes to the very heart of public finances," he said. "It threatens the Executive's overarching aim of achieving a peaceful, fair and prosperous society, with respect for the rule of law."
ACC Harris told the Stormont committee that people think buying a fake item nets them a bargain.
"In fact, counterfeiting is very strongly linked to organised crime, and it supports organised crime," he said. "For every fake DVD that a person buys, someone, not necessarily in the UK or Ireland but perhaps in China, is being held against their will and is spending 18 or 20 hours copying CDs."
He told MLAs that fake goods include CDs and DVDs, clothing and footwear, cigarettes and alcohol and other high-value items such as handbags, hair-styling irons, make-up, power tools, iPods, Wii systems, Sky remote controls and even electric toothbrush heads.
"The packaging of those goods is always of the highest quality, but the product inside is the cheapest of cheap imitations," he said.
"All the criminal's investment is in the outside packaging, which, when opened, contains a very poor imitation."
The Far East often features as a manufacturing source, but goods also originate in Africa and South America, he said.
But the demand for such goods is stubbornly persistent. OCTF targeted advertising at 18 to 25-year-olds before Christmas with disappointing results. Later research found that almost everybody understood the link between buying a cheap product, such as a DVD, and organised crime.
"However, the second finding was that they would not change their behaviour and would still buy cheaper presents," Mr Harris said.
Northern Ireland is also seen as a good place to come for education and employment opportunities, he said. Therefore, men, women and children are enticed to make the journey to Northern Ireland on the promise of employment, education and a better life than the one that they have in their own country.
"In particular, such people come from the Far East and sub-Saharan Africa. On arrival here, having been illegally trafficked onto the island, they find that they have to repay what is, in effect, a debt bond by being forced in to prostitution or some sort of servitude.
"Worryingly, we rescued a juvenile – a person in their early teens – who had been orphaned and was then trafficked to Northern Ireland. The person was orphaned approximately a year ago, only to find themselves in Northern Ireland, in the most dire and grim circumstances.
"It is important to point out that is happening almost under our noses. The brothels are not in places that one might expect them to be. They are in rural areas, among rural communities, and in city and town centre apartment blocks.
"After we carry out operations and raid places, neighbours say that they wondered why lots of men were coming and going to and from the premises at all times of the night and day.
"The answer is obvious: the premises were being run as a brothel."
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Monday 28 May 2012
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