JUVENTUD REBELDE 

http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/cuba/2007-02-25/desenmascaran-falsificacion-de-productos-en-redes-comerciales-del-pais/

 

February 25, 2007 - 00:01:15 GMT

 

Adulterations (I)

 

Sale of counterfeit goods in Cuban markets exposed.

 

For years the field of services has been increasingly encumbered with the vicious practice of selling adulterated products.

 

By Yailin Orta Rivera and Norge Martínez Montero / e-mail: digital@jrebelde.cip.cu

Photos: Calixto N. Llanes

 

Over ten Suchel products were surveyed by the inspectors, but the management refused to let them do the trials outside the company;s labs.

 

 

 

For over 75 years, its taste, foamy texture and lightness have turned the brand Cristal into a favorite among Cuban beer drinkers. Adding to its body is a mixture of a sweet touch and a modicum of bitterness and sourness, and a few pinches of salt, together with its nose, quality and appearance.
 

However, according to regular drinkers, the qualities that make this beer so smooth to the palate began to decline, and whole lots of beer manufactured in some underground «industry» were put up for sale in a number of outlets.

 

All the four sequential steps of brewing "production of clarified must, fermentation and ripening, filtering of the beverage, and bottling of the finished product" as well as the experience in and skill at the age-old secrets of brewing that the masters have gained were circumvented by the counterfeiters.

 

But, has beer been the only product the delinquents have tampered with in order to line their pockets?

 

PUTTING THE PATCH ON BUCANERO'S EYE

 

Highly demanded products like coffee, cigarettes and cigars are forged more and more cleverly by those determined to live off our people's money.

 

Forced to look elsewhere as a result of Cristal management's prompt reaction to stem the nonstop adulterations, they set their sights on Bucanero beer.

 

Not that it was a random choice. Cristal�s loosing streak at the time turned Bucanero into Cuba�s favorite, a significant detail soon grasped by the resourceful street «chemists».
 

That�s when the National Revolutionary Police (PNR), still under the effects of the Cristal forgeries, released a film clearly showing how a man from San Miguel del Padrón municipality in Havana forged several boxes of canned Bucanero beer every day.

 

Having gained access to the film, JR witnessed the details that this rip-off artist gave to the police investigators about his «recipe» to make such a deceitful concoction.

 

Among other things, the offender said he bought beer by the liter from tank trucks and kept it in rough containers from which the liquid came already carbonated and almost ready for the virgin Bucanero cans he would buy from some suppliers.

 

He added that his swindle included wholesaling beer boxes to middlemen who afterward catered to outlets, where they were marketed as the genuine product.

 

Other times this man would set aside his production for people who placed orders in advance as they were planning a fifteenth birthday party or a wedding. Those he charged in Cuban money and at a price lower than in the state�s market. Quite a lucrative deal: everybody won. That is, barring the consumers who, paradoxically, were the ones who paid for it.

 

Police expertise and popular assistance made it possible to close down that particular «brewery». Yet, all of us who watched the video had a question hovering around in our mind: how many more «factories» like it or similar are still out there?

 

Time "and police work" proved that the forgery of any domestic brand of beer remains a running sore. Lieutenant Colonel Ángel Díaz, head of information at the PNR's National Headquarters, assures that on occasion they still discover clandestine breweries hidden in houses.

 

PIRACY BY THE BUCKETLOAD

 

Ronda, a brand of rum customers bought at a bar called El 2do. Dragón de Oro, was another victim of this practice: it had nine times less alcohol than the original.

 

A long-established habit in the field of services, the sale of deceitful goods has gradually gained ground across Cuba�s commercial network, swelling the personal fortunes of some people intent on hurting the prestige of highly popular products and tarnishing the output of various industries.

 

(CAPTION: The milkman was punished for watering down the milk and the rum!)

 

 

 

 

So it was confirmed by this daily in a three-month-long investigation throughout the country that included visits to a number of entities and a survey of over a hundred consumers.
 

As was evidenced by our team, the fraud ranges from the cheap trick of watering down rum and other beverages to increase their volume to the making of much-demanded goods in underground «factories» and the use of sophisticated techniques and even computer equipment.

 

Among the preferred forgeries, according to those polled, are alcoholic drinks, cigarettes and cigars, soap, perfume, deodorant, coffee, ice-cream, and bottled water, to name a few.

 

Worthy of notice is that Cuban consumers have developed a «victim�s mentality». More than 80% of respondents mentioned at least one case when they think they were had, albeit very few ever complained to the sellers.

 

Given these circumstances and together with provincial general inspector Yudith Rojas and municipal supervisor Orestes Osorio, we visited a number of outlets to check the authenticity of some of their products. Our findings confirmed what most of our interviewees had said.

 

In the morning of January 5, 2007 we went to El 2do. Dragón de Oro, a café located in Cerro Municipality. A bottle of Ronda rum that the inspectors picked at random from the storage room and submitted to several tests proved to be 9 degrees short of the legal 34. Faced with the evidence, manager Luis Prieto excused the shortfall by saying it had so been delivered by the producer.

 

Dora Carbonell, deputy manager of the Alcoholic and Soft Drinks Enterprise in Havana, recently showed us a plastig bag with more than 1,500 fake computer-generated labels for Ronda, Pinilla, Bocoy, El Valle and even Legendario rum that the Police seized from a citizen. Printed in clandestine facilities, the said humbugs were so well made as to fool the most sober of drinkers any time.

 

TÍNIMA, FROM CAMAGÜEY PROVINCE!?

 

At El 2do. Dragón de Oro, the Tínima labels would come off the bottle by themselves. As concluded by the experts, they had been glued by hand, not by the factory machine. Accordingly, and in line with article 50 of resolution 141/93, they took with them a Tínima bottle for further trials, and verified it was not the real beer.

 

Drinking Tínima right then and there were Aníbal Mustelier and Carlos Guerra, who agreed it had a funny taste about it and noticed to that the labels peeled off easily. However, neither had complained: there was only that brand for sale and no money in their pockets to afford better quality beer.

 

It was Ibrahim Gonzalez, director of the enterprise responsible for marketing Tínima in Havana, who ultimately provided technical proof of the fraud: «You can tell this is not the authentic beer just by looking at it. For starters, the label was glued by hand: the grooves left by the sealing machine are nowhere to be seen, and it has neither the color nor the appearance of the original».

 

Patrons at La Barrita, a bar several blocks away from there, were also duped by the false «Tínimas». There too Ronda rum was stalked by deception. When the inspectors arrived, there were five brands of rum in storage, but only the fake Ronda was for sale, a violation for which the manager was fined. Who knows how much of that phoney thumbed its nose at the customers� pockets?

 

¡AY, MAMÁ INÉS![1]

 

To El Rápido La Serviliana, a fast-food outlet in Plaza Municipality, stretched the forger's tentacles, aided and abetted by some staffers. On December 12 last year, fourteen bags of counterfeit Cubita coffee were found in the premises by technicians from the Guanabacoa-based Tasting and Quality Laboratory of the Coffee Roasting Enterprise Regil 1.

 

«All the 14 bags, 12 of 230 grams and 2 of 460 grams, contained old coffee mixed with peas, bearing fake seals and dates of manufacture different from the usual ones that Regil 1 stamps on its bags. They had the wrong weight, and some actually had dregs inside», explained Luis Trujillo Rodríguez, Regil 1's top taster and one of Cuba's best.

 

The Tasting Laboratory decided the bags had been made elsewhere and smuggled into the outlet for selling purposes, and decreed that the staff had to compensate for them. The price of a 230-gram bag is 3.45 CUC, while the 460-gram one costs 6.75 CUC.

 

As if this weren't enough, CUPET's gas station at Vento and Santa Catalina streets in Cerro Municipality had it worse: the Cubita coffee they were equally phony, but the wrongdoers messed things up by using bags dated May 13, 2002, unaware that the plant had decided to stop production around then owing to mounting evidence that someone was stealing Cubita packaging material. Besides, the last recorded Cubita coffee delivery to La Serviliana was dated on May 7.

 

«Those packages had an awful taste and smell. It was the same old M.O. as with the peas and dregs», Trujillo remarked.

 

ERSATZ CRIOLLOS[2]

 

Ranking first on the list of forgeries are Cuban cigarettes of various brands, according to those JR interviewed for this report.

 

Counterfeiting cigarettes is a practice as ancient as it is diverse. In the beginning, the brand Populares was the main victim, but then others like Criollos and Titanes appeared that opened up new horizons for the cheaters.

 

No Cuban cigarette brand escapes from them these days, not even those sold in hard currency, as confirmed by both police operations and conventional wisdom.

 

«Days ago I bought a pack of Monterreys, which you expect to be good since they're sold in convertible pesos, but it was a real letdown. I don't know what cigarettes I can buy that are safe», grumbles Antonio Barreto, from Havana.

 

An underground factory of Criollos cigarettes where 14 people worked was recently discovered in Havana�s 10 de Octubre Municipality. Its owner was a wealthy man who supplied several city municipalities.

 

The inquiry revealed that both the tobacco and other raw materials used by the forgers came from Agrario factory in Rancho Boyeros.

 

Lieutenant Colonel Ángel Díaz, from Havana, talked about the growing number of clandestine cigarette and cigar «factories» in the capital city lately. For instance, a search of a private home at Old Havana�s San Isidro neighborhood where they found 127 cigars, two bags of tobacco, 298 lids of cases for cigar boxes, 210 ribbons, a package of cigar bands, three packages of labels and two presses to make cigars.

 

SUCHEL IS A WHOLE DIFFERENT MATTER

 

Those polled during the investigation questioned the legitimacy of some perfumes and toiletries made by Suchel Industries and sold in the hard-currency and Cuban-peso markets. And they have a point, as is evidenced by police reports of fraud and adulteration.

 

«Suchel is a big enterprise with a wide range of products, and there are several people involved in crimes related to that industry», said Ministry of the Interior colonel Luis Álvarez Núñez, chief of the police station in Arroyo Naranjo Municipality.

 

Paying heed to reports filed by the population, inspectors Yudith and Orestes went to various outlets in Havana where they chose more than ten Suchel products they intended to submit to laboratory tests "as they do with other goods" but were unable to because Suchel top management refused to cooperate with the investigation.

 

JR harbors no doubts regarding the originality of Suchel products. Still, several interviewees think otherwise. One of them, Eulalia Otaño, from Los Pinos neighborhood in Havana, grumbled about the rather watery toothpaste her grocery has sold more than once.
 

Zuleidis Torres bought a Four Seasons conditioning cream that left a bitter taste in her mouth: a week later it had gone hopelessly bad.

 

The same Suchel top managers admitted that a number of bad-smelling Rexona deodorants were detected last year in the store Panorama of Playa Municipality. In this connection, Panorama floor manager Lázara Rodríguez Vives recalled a Suchel official who once took away two spoiled deodorants, and that some customers had complained about the quality of Mariposa and Veguero, two of the most expensive and exclusive Cuban perfumes.

 

«We give Suchel's number to any complaining customer so they can have their issue taken care of. It�s always been like that and there's never been a problem», she added.

 

A recent police raid in Arroyo Naranjo Municipality stumbled upon a farm on the outskirts where thousands of soap bars were secretly made every single day with raw materials stolen from one of Suchel's facilities.

 

«That day we seized seven tanks of caustic soda and five of coconut oil, as well as 18 boxes with 105 soap bars each. Several Suchel workers were involved in that scheme», explained captain Bartolomé Verdecia, who was in charge of the case.

 

SOME ANSWERS ARE MISSING

 

The flood of forgeries is becoming a major worry that neither police work nor the customers� continuous complaints will suffice to eliminate.

 

It would be worth knowing what controls the country's producers have in place to curb this trend or if they take the necessary measures to nip such offense in the bud.

 

Another question crying out for an answer is related to the causes and conditions that pave the way for these adulterations as much as to the role played by those responsible for looking after the consumers. There are plenty of questions for a first approach to this issue. At least, the consumers have already set the ball rolling. Now it's the entitie's turn at bat.

 

Things that happen

Odalys Galindo, from Old Havana, bought a pot of Alondra[3] ice-cream at the Dí Tú outlet on Zapata street, and ended up wondering whether one of those birds had flown away carrying with it vanilla's real taste and qualities.

 

A similar thing happened one evening to Yudenkis Delgado with a pot of Guarina strawberry ice-cream he had bought at a stand on J and Calzada St.

 

Marelis Caset lives in Centro Habana Municipality. She once bought nail polish at La Epoca store that was well past its expiration date.

 

A fine collector in the same municipality, Elieser Marquetti assures to have bought beer in stands and small cafés throughout his neighborhood which taste differently and are therefore of questionable origin.

 

«I�ve seen private vendors selling their own cigarettes in those stands. You buy a lot of cigarettes around that have no seal, and it�s easy to notice that neither the smoke, nor the fire, nor the ash are even close to the real ones», said Ramón Carbonell.

 

Daniel Lezcano, a worker at the Gran Teatro de La Habana, found a bottle of Havana Club rum, priced at 3.85 CUC, at the Fornos market in Centro Habana Municipality, but returned there half an hour later to complain about its bad quality. The clerks gave him another bottle without uttering a word.

 

Ramiro Martínez bought two jars of hydrochloric acid at the boulevard on San Rafael St. to see whether the product was good this time, since on previous occasions it had served to stain, rather than clean, whatever it had touched.

 

 


 

[1] Refrain of an old popular Cuban tune about the pleasure of drinking coffee (T.N.).

[2] This is the most popular brand of cigarettes among Cuban smokers these days (T.N.).

[3] Alondra is the Spanish word for lark (T.N.).