Gangs earning €40m a year from trading in counterfeit goods

IRISH criminal gangs are earning about €40 million a year trading in counterfeit goods, an industry body has estimated.

The Irish National Federation Against Copyright Theft (INFACT) said there are in the region of 12 organised crime gangs involved in the business.

INFACT director general Brian Finegan was speaking at a three-day international conference on counterfeiting, hosted jointly by the gardaí and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), together with Interpol, the global police agency.

Mr Finegan said Irish gangs were earning massive profits from the counterfeit trade, which includes everything from DVDs to clothes to pharmaceuticals.

“Their revenue is around €40m,” said Mr Finegan. “You are going up to hundreds of millions of euro if you include Britain.”

He said it costs criminals a couple of cent to produce a DVD, but they can sell them for €5 each.

He said the business was organised now.

“You can’t just go in and set up a stall. Just on the DVD side, they are now intertrading those stalls among the gangs and just to buy the guy’s pitch, there is one that went on Drogheda for €40,000.

“Parts of it we know are franchised from across the border. So (one gang says) ‘we will allow you to operate at Drogheda Market, but you pay us 50% of everything in insurance’.”

He said a lot of the business emanates from the border: “We have lamped those border people — who also work the far side of the border — at 7am with van loads of product, as we call it in Cork. They are there doing the delivery to the Cork markets. They have got those sown up as well.”

He said years ago people convicted for piracy had only minor convictions, like no insurance.

“Now you are hearing armed assault, bank robbery, drug offences, the litany that is coming out. You are into a different league here.”

He added: “In terms of really hardcore players where you would have people within that group who have been arrested and questioned for murder and other high end crime, probably about 12 gangs.

“There is a lot of extended families involved in this — that is on the distribution side. The brains, the investment, the money tend to be more shadowy.”

Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy and the new PSNI chief constable Matt Baggot said crime gangs and dissident republicans were heavily involved in the trade.

They said there was already a high degree of co-operation between the two agencies and that this would deepen.

The two police chiefs had their first meeting on Monday night. Both described the threat from dissident groups as “serious and substantial”.

Comm Murphy rejected suggestions that Garda resources had been diverted from the border to deal with organised crime.

Some 370 delegates, from 44 countries, are attending the conference in Dublin.