Jeff Hardy, Director General of TRACIT discusses the surge in counterfeit purchases across the UK which is fuelling a growing underground economy, costing billions and putting jobs at risk.
00:00The illicit counterfeit goods trade is widespread across the UK.
00:04I spoke to Jeff Hardy, Director General at the Transatlantic Alliance, to combat illicit trade.
00:10I asked him about the scale of the problem.
00:12The level of counterfeiting in the United Kingdom is surging so much so that it has reached $7 billion.
00:20In fact, actually, if you take into consideration counterfeits that are available online, it may be double that amount.
00:26What's happening is that everyone's shopping online more and more.
00:30So in addition to the purchases, legitimate purchases online, you're going to be exposed to fakes that are available online.
00:36In fact, it's the number one source for a customer to receive a product.
00:40So those numbers, the governments aren't yet keeping up to speed with the fact that those types of counterfeits are flooding into this country in small packages that are going right to the doorstep of local citizens.
00:53One in five Brits are comfortable with buying fakes.
00:57Why do you think that is?
00:59Well, I think that they're only comfortable because they don't fully understand what the full costs are.
01:07So those people may think that they're getting a bargain because the price is lower.
01:12But, you know, the first harm there is their own personal risk, especially if it's a product that they consume, like toothpaste, for example, or put on their body, like shampoo.
01:21But beyond that, then, of course, is, you know, the bargain quickly becomes a ripoff when they're exposed to a very, very low quality product.
01:30But after that, you know, what they don't understand, the only way they could possibly be comfortable is they don't fully understand that the demand, their demand for counterfeiting oftentimes causes forced labor or leads to human trafficking or creates profits for criminal groups that in turn use those funds for money laundering, bribery and other forms of corruption.
01:55But what is being done currently to stem the flow of these goods and what more indeed could be done?
02:02Well, for starters, I mean, the United Kingdom is a G7 country.
02:06It's got mature laws and regulatory regulations in place.
02:11So what I think that my recommendation of the UK is greater enforcement.
02:17We have the laws in place.
02:19We have a rule book in place.
02:20We have penalties in place.
02:22We need to enforce those and we need to ramp up those enforcement.
02:26Jeff Hardy, thank you very much for your time.
