Paris , we have a problem. As the French capital gears up to host the 2024 Olympic Games , police have been cracking down on the booming counterfeit market in preparation for the international sporting event. Back in April, officers descended upon Seine-Saint-Ouen, home to the city’s largest flea market, where they shut down 11 stores peddling fake luxury goods, Reuters reported.
Altogether, they confiscated 63,000 knockoffs ranging from copycat Louis Vuitton handbags to Nike sneakers which led to 10 arrests. “We’ve been working a lot ahead of the Olympic Games, there were a lot of operations carried out, with training over almost 18 months for operational agents, the police, customs, the gendarmerie, fraud prevention,” UNIFAB head Delphine Sarfati-Sobreira told Reuters. “And there were big, major operations, like a few weeks ago, the closure of more than 10 stores in the Saint-Ouen area, which is 500 meters from the Olympic village.
Thousands of fake products were seized, to really clean up this area where there were a lot of counterfeits in circulation,” he added. Many of the summer Olympic events are slated to take place in iconic sites across The City of Light. The Seine-Saint-Denis suburb, for example, is where the Olympic Aquatic Center will be.
The venue is set to host artistic swimming, diving, and water polo events, in addition to the closing ceremony. However, police have previously voiced concerns about fraudulent street vendors in the neighborhood. Whi.
