Categories
· Cross-Border/Crime
non-USA, by Country
· Brazil
· Paraguay
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Business in fake goods is booming, which lowers tax revenue and hurts legal operations.
Jump to full article: Los Angeles Times, 2004-04-04
Author: Héctor Tobar and Andrés D'Alessandro, Times Staff Writers
Intro: They are all locally produced counterfeits, part of an illicit cigarette industry that is, at once, a major source of income to thousands in this impoverished country and also a national embarrassment.
The cigarettes are aimed chiefly at the market in Brazil, just a few hundred yards away. Every day, crowds of Brazilian shoppers venture into Ciudad del Este across the Bridge of Friendship spanning the Parana River that divides the two countries in search of bargains in a place famous for the counterfeit and the contraband, from television sets and telephoto lenses to ammunition and eau de cologne.
Paraguay's recently installed president, Nicanor Duarte Frutos, has promised to do all he can to stop the factories that churn out the fake cigarettes, calling them a symbol of his country's reputation for rampant corruption. Besides violating international copyright laws, the president said, the tobacco firms are not paying local taxes. . . .
"If we don't fight these things, there is no future for Paraguay." . . .
Duarte Frutos was also acting under pressure from the world's biggest tobacco companies, and from Brazil, the United States and the European Union.
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