TRIESTE – Officers from the Guardia di Finanza and officials from the Trieste Customs and Monopolies Agency have seized two containers arriving from the Turkish port of Mersin, loaded with counterfeit hygiene products and air fresheners destined for an Austrian company based in Neudorf.
The operation followed a targeted risk analysis conducted at the Port of Trieste, where more than 16,000 containers and trucks from non-EU countries arrive each week. Through detailed checks on technical and commercial parameters, inspectors intercepted two suspicious shipments: the first container contained anonymous shampoo bottles, while the second held over 600,000 adhesive labels perfectly reproducing the logo of a well-known international brand, along with 147,000 counterfeit air freshener packages.
The labels were reportedly intended to be affixed to the bottles before sale, in order to place fake goods on the market as genuine products. Subsequent expert analyses, carried out with the support of the brand owners, confirmed the counterfeiting — causing both economic and reputational damage, and constituting a case of unfair competition.
The investigation, coordinated by the Trieste Public Prosecutor’s Office, is continuing in other European countries to trace the full counterfeit supply chain. The estimated market value of the seized goods exceeds one million euros. Authorities emphasized that counterfeiting, in addition to being a commercial fraud, fuels undeclared labour, tax evasion and organized crime — and in this case, poses potential risks to consumer health.
