Admin l Thursday, December 1, 2022
FRANKFURT – Customs officers at Frankfurt Airport confiscated a shipment of more than 2,100 counterfeit luxury watches arriving from China for distribution in Europe.
If original, the assorted brands of watches would be worth around €170 million (§176 million), a customs spokesperson said on Thursday. The 12 packages containing them came from Hong Kong and were to be delivered to North Macedonia via Germany’s largest airport.
The watches were seized in October but so good was the quality of the suspected fakes that officials had to confer with the 11 affected brand owners.
“Often counterfeit watches cannot be recognized at first glance,” the spokesperson said. After it was confirmed that all are copies, the watches will now be destroyed.
Frankfurt airport authorities seized more than 256,000 counterfeit brand name items last year, 83% of which originated in China.