Prevent illegal, fake goods on internet

	A director prosecuted for manufacturing and trading fake goods
	HCM City, southern provinces step up efforts against fake goods
	Significantly change in prevention and fight against crime, smuggling and counterfeit goods

Fake goods seized by the HCM City Market Surveillance Department. Photo: TL

E-commerceis growing

Director of HCM City Market Surveillance Department Truong Van Ba ​​said the market surveillance force has always coordinated with other agencies, the Police of the districts to exchange, share and provide related information on the situation of law violations, market developments, methods and tricks of smuggling, trading of fake and banned goods; and to deal with many seriously complicated cases. The department has drastically inspected, controlled and handled violations related to e-commerce in the city.

Detected e-commerce violations showed acts of e-commerce violations are mainly law violations by business organisations and individuals on creating websites to sell goods without notifying State agencies; using fake information to participate in e-commerce activities; providing insufficient information about website’s owner, goods, service, price, delivery, payment method, contract terms and trading conditions to customers before they order goods online.

Hundreds of violation cases are detected every year and only in 2020, HCM City Market Surveillance destroyed counterfeit goods and poor-quality goods worth more than VND 9.2 billion, double the figure from the previous year.

Major General Dinh Thanh Nhan, Head of the Investigation Police Agency, Deputy Director of HCM City Public Security, said online trading is increasingly growing, besides the benefits; e-commerce is becoming a challenge for law enforcement agencies to prevent commercial fraud, infringement of intellectual property and protect consumers' interests and for genuine business organisations and individuals. HCM City public security will workwith HCM Market Surveillance to have solutions to effectively prevent the use of illegal and counterfeit goods.

Fight against violations in e-commerce is very difficult

Despite discovering and seizing many cases of fake and contraband goods of online traders, HCM City Market Surveillance Department has found it difficult to inspect and handle e-commerce violations. Specifically, current legal documents in e-commerce activities are still very limited and not efficient. Some pages publish pictures and information about prescription medicines, illegal alcohol and cigarettes, but there are no sanctions for these activities.

Registration of trading on the internet and e-commerce service website is increasingly simple and convenient, any business individual or organisation can easily register for an account to sell their goods on websites, social networks like Facebook and Zalo or create mobile applications for sales.

However, the use of fake information for registration is very common and almost no seller provides information about the business registration certificate or personal tax code, so it is tough to identify traders and storage places of infringing goods for inspection and handling when the provided information is fake.

Traders of fake goods use fake information to create many different sales accounts and use the same image from the original company to deceive consumers. With such sophisticated tricks, consumers are easily confused and difficult to distinguish real and fake goods, so they may buy fake trademark goods, poor-quality goods at high prices.

HCM City Market Surveillance Department recommends that there should be specific regulations and sanctions for displaying and advertising products as banned goods, counterfeit goods, illegal goods, and poor-quality goods, goods of unknown origin and goods infringing intellectual property rights on e-commerce sites and social networks.

E-commerce involves the introduction and information of products and goods on the internet so consumers can choose and buy goods online, then the seller will deliver goods to the buyer. The core point here is the need to check and control the supply of infringing goods for e-commerce traders.

HCM City Market Surveillance Department regularly works with Customs, Police and Border Guard to monitor and inspect domestic warehouses, transit warehouses of delivery units, train stations, yards and seriously handle the supply ofillegal goods, goods infringing intellectual property rights, banned goods and goods of unknown origin.

In addition, the department also proposes other agencies remove problems to fight against contraband and counterfeit goods.

Recently, Vice Chairwoman of HCM City People's Committee Phan Thi Thang directed forces to focus on fighting against illegal goods and fake goods under assigned tasks.

Warnings of fake goods on social networks VCN- Smuggled goods, counterfeit goods, goods of unknown origin and goods infringing intellectual property rights are publicly ...

The Customs and the Border Guard forces are responsible for detecting and prevent smuggling at the border gate; the police force focuses on fighting and destroying lines of trafficking and transporting illegal and banned goods; the market surveillance force must strengthen inspection of transportation, storage of prohibited goods, smuggled goods, and production and trading of counterfeit goods on the domestic market.