Maritime Trade And Counterfeit Goods Needle In A Haystack
An early setback this year for Chinese counterfeiters saw the seizure of more than 80,000 fake watches in Gioia Tauro in Calabria on 5 January. Lucky straw or final straw? Report of a visit to the bottom of the haystack.
The port infrastructure of Gioia Tauro was built in the early 1990s with a view to absorbing container traffic. Indeed, containers have ushered in a minor revolution in the way maritime trade is conducted, in the sense that a single cargo can transport all kinds of goods in a motley collection seemingly inextricable to ordinary mortals. In reality, the system is childa€™s play: all containers are numbered and a computer stacks them in logical order, taking into account from the outset all unloading methods registered by the forwarder. Container ships are one of the innumerable applications of the digital revolution. Their arrival sounded the death knell for the livelihoods of many thousands of dock workers. Today the most modern cargo ships, with a length of 350m, carry up to 10,000 containers and can be unloaded in a few hours by a team of just two or three people, assisted by a computer which itself controls automated lifting equipment! Needless to say, traditional ports are incapable of receiving these a€?cargo ships of the third kinda€? which are equal in size to super-tankers.
This framework of maritime trade is not without consequence for customs authorities responsible for controlling goods. While not long ago officials had several days to examine a cargo, today they must do so in a few hours. At Gioia Tauro, 5,000 additional containers are added to the stockpile every day God gives along the four kilometres of docks. For the 50 Italian officials, if God grants the days, the Devil counts the minutes. It is for this reason that targets must be determined before the vessel even moors up at the quayside. Accordingly, 24 hours before the cargo arrives, customs officials are given a€?manifestsa€?, i.e. papers issued by the forwarder detailing the composition of goods carried in each container, albeit in a language indecipherable to the uninitiated. There lies the challenge: officials must search for clues that will prompt them to inspect one container rather than another. The shrewdest and most experienced customs officers take responsibility for this task, while their younger colleagues carry out spot checks. All means are deployed to complete the work quickly, from dogs that sniff out drugs to latest-generation equipment such as the famous a€?matrix scannersa€?, which in less than a minute can display the contents of a container measuring 12m long by 2.60m tall by 2.40m wide, roughly the equivalent of 25 tonnes of extremely varied goods.
The question arises as to how a consignment of fake watches can be detected concealed behind mountains of T-shirts, piles of blouses and stacks of jeans? a€?The recipe is simple: 20% talent, 80% work and the rest is just luck,a€? answer the customs officers not without humour. Pride is their only reward as they unearth 160,000 counterfeit articles, including 80,000 timepieces, 40,000 of which are fake Swiss watches showing the logo of 22 different brands. They will not give more details, being closely bound by official secrecy. At the end of the visit, one fact looms large: with the explosion of commercial traffic and the planned expansion of Gioia Tauro, 50 customs officers and all the luck in the world will not be enough. Much more will be required to find the needle in the haystack.
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