Perfume counterfeiting: LVMH announces a “historic” seizure of 1 million bottles

The luxury giant LVMH - owner of the Parisian - announced on Monday a "historic" seizure of more than a million bottles of counterfeit perfumes in Greece, intended for the local market. "This is a historic seizure: we usually have warehouses and storage places, and what is new here is that we also have the production center," said Laurent Marcadier, director of the protection of group assets and individuals.

He describes "a real place of manufacture, a factory of fake perfumes with workers, machines, empty bottles, pumps, packaging , labels, everything to mount a bottle of perfume". A “large part” of the 1.179 million bottles seized during the operation were counterfeits of the main perfume brands of the LVMH group, including Guerlain, Dior and Kenzo.

According to a statement from the Greek authorities, published on Sunday, the searches were carried out in Heraklion, Crete, and seven people were arrested, "members of a criminal organization specializing in the illegal manufacture and sale of counterfeit goods in shops for tourists across the country. "

600,000 euros in cash were seized

Laurent Marcadier indicates that "the investigators, from a Greek department specializing in organized crime, searched several places: the places of manufacture and storage, as well as the domicile of the principal, and thus laid hands on this occasion out of 500,000 other counterfeit items, including bags and sunglasses, which they did not manufacture but imported ”.

“At the time of the arrest, one million bottles were ready to be marketed. It's a first. We have already had large seizures in watchmaking, but exceeding one million in Europe is very rare, "said the official, who also said that 600,000 euros in cash were seized.

LVMH has set up customs cooperation with various countries around the world, in particular those affected by the production, import or sale of counterfeit products. In 2019, the fight against counterfeiting cost Bernard Arnault's group 43 million euros in internal and external expenses, a scourge which "can have an immediate adverse effect on turnover and profit, and gradually harm the brand image of the products concerned and the confidence of consumers ”, according to the LVMH reference document.