Malta, 1 June:
Malta’s Customs Department has announced that it seized a shipment of 7.6 million counterfeit cigarettes during the week destined . . .[restrict]for Libya.
The cigarettes were on a ship at the Malta Freeport at Marsaxlokk in a container which documentation said contained saddles. The unnamed vessel had come from China.
Suspicious customs officials decided to open the container after scanning it.
They later said that during the past three years, many container-loads of pirated and fake goods heading to Libya had been seized. These had included cosmetics, computer equipment, DVD players and mobile phones.
Malta’s Freeport is one of the main transshipments centres in the Mediterranean and the 10th busiest container port in Europe.
Counterfeit goods are a problem in Libya because even before the revolution there was almost attempt to control their import. Libya is not a member of the WTO nor party to any international agreements that membership entails [/restrict]
