Waito Foundation
Foreword by the Founder
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02 February 2011
WAITO Foundation : « an alternative to current anti-counterfeiting policies »
The border between what is legal and what is illegal is becoming blurry and the risks for all economic players and consumers are becoming very significant.
The globalisation of crime is, and will probably remain, a major plight affecting the whole of society in the 21st century. In the area of volume retailing, illicit trafficking has always existed. But with globalisation and the fall of the Berlin Wall, easy access to means of transport and the development of the Internet, it has acquired a transnational dimension. Everyone is now concerned, from the ordinary citizen to government authorities. Today, these markets have become interdependent, particularly in the consumer environment, where counterfeiting, food fraud and smuggling converge.
In spite of their differences, these illicit dealings all obey the same cardinal rules of supply and demand and are driven by the same logic of competition, profitability, the drive to be inventive, win market share and reduce costs of production. Everything is focused on a single goal: to generate quick profits at least risk. In doing this, the boundary between legal and illegal is becoming blurry and the risks for all players involved in the consumer-product production and delivery chain are becoming very significant.
Until now, no system for combating counterfeiting, fraud or smuggling has (with a few exceptions) succeeded in dissuading organised crime from investing in mass counterfeiting: that which is prejudicial to the safety of ordinary consumers, public health and the economies of states. Also, whatever is claimed, no legal arsenal has really managed to achieve its main objective: to ensure that everyone has access to products that are economically acceptable, while ensuring their legality, integrity and compliance.
More than two billion consumers around the world suffer from problems related to products that are "unsound", fraudulent or counterfeit, which are a source of considerable profits for international criminal organisations and local mafias.
Three essential questions
Three questions now arise: What risks do consumers really run? What solutions can the public authorities provide through the protection of intellectual property rights and the provisions derived from them? And lastly, what strategies can be adopted by the public authorities and interprofessional federations to meet the new challenges involved in ensuring that consumer products are safe when faced with the globalisation of illicit traffic?
The vulnerability of both public institutions and private firms to developments in criminality raises questions about the risks that are run by consumers in relation to Counterfeiting-crime. Ultimately, it is consumers who, by their purchasing behaviour, will trigger crises of confidence, whether at the level of large industries or the political authorities.
The government, interprofessional federations, international organisations and leading companies in their sectors are all obliged to intervene to deal with this entirely-justified heightened perception of risk. Nevertheless, without early detection of these risks, without reliable statistics on identified offences, without the expertise of criminologists, without the acceptance of new technical/legal alternatives and especially without the perception of a policy of prevention and deterrence through the criminal courts backed by sovereign law and the necessary transparency of markets, which form the basis of social equilibrium, companies will not be able to fight the inevitable development of Counterfeiting-crime.
This is why the WAITO Foundation was created. Through its freedom of action, its independence, its farsightedness, its pragmatism and the power of its experts — most of them criminologists, magistrates, policemen, customs officers and politicians, spread over five continents — WAITO Foundation aims to serve governments and citizens, together with private and public companies throughout the world, sharing their vision of a different anti-counterfeiting policy that is more equitable for all and more moral.
Our roadmap is already prepared. It is in creating the offence of Counterfeiting-crime, an unprecedented legal weapon in the fight against the illicit traffic of material goods, that we may with equanimity address the problem of the protection of consumer goods and promote the transparency of international trade.