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It was the legal representatives of several fine jewellery businesses who put the Guardia Civil on the trail. They reported that counterfeit articles of their respective commercial brands were being sold on numerous stalls at different street markets across Malaga city and the province where both legitimate and counterfeit goods were allegedly being sold at the same time.
Operation 'Mercatería' has ended with the arrest of eight people and the investigation of 14 more for the alleged commission of a crime against industrial property. In addition, the Guardia Civil has seized in Malaga and Madrid more than 42,000 counterfeit pieces of fine jewellery that falls under different brand names.
According to a statement issued by the Guardia Civil, the counterfeit goods were imported from China and then distributed nationally. During the first phase of the investigation, investigating officers identified the places where the people in charge of the street market stalls bought the counterfeit products, namely five warehouses owned by several companies located on the Guadalhorce industrial estate in Malaga.
Although the main customers were owners of street stalls, these counterfeit goods were also offered on online sales platforms, according to the Guardia Civil.
The second phase of the operation enabled investigators to discover and prove that the counterfeit goods sold wholesale from the Malaga industrial estate were supplied by two companies based in the Cobo Calleja industrial estate in Fuenlabrada, Madrid.
Once the different levels of the illicit commercial network were known, the investigators, members of the Guardia Civil's specialist unit for excise duty, taxes and border control operations in Malaga, launched simultaneous raids on the five warehouses located in Malaga and the two in Madrid. These searches enabled the officers to seize a total of 42,062 counterfeit pieces from prestigious collections, mainly from three high-end jewellery brands - mostly pendants, bracelets, earrings and rings.
The Guardia Civil was keen to stress that, with this operation, they had managed to strike at all three factions that made up this illegal network of counterfeit goods, namely their import and distribution at national level, their wholesale turnover at provincial level and their direct, retail sale to the public. The detainees and the seized goods have been handed over to Malaga's Magistrates Court.
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