The OEM has been reporting on its 2019 success in Saudi Arabia and taking stock of its seized counterfeit goods in the region.
On Sunday 20 October 2019, HP hosted a local event in Riyadh to help raise awareness of counterfeit and fraudulent activity in the region. Attendees from private and public sectors gathered to learn about the threats of counterfeit and how to protect their businesses.
Al Bawaba reported that during the summer in 2019 HP and local authorities managed to seize 65,000 counterfeit items from three major sources. In the second half of the year, HP and Saudi authorities searched several “undercover facilities” which Al Bawaba said were “assembling fake products located in the Riyadh and Jeddah areas”. These further raids led to the seizure of another 50,000 counterfeit products.
Mathew Thomas, VP and Managing Director, Middle East, Turkey and East Africa at HP told Al Bawaba: “It is our duty to protect consumers and businesses from criminal operations, and we commend the cooperation and commitment of organisations such as HP to combat these illegal activities. HP’s dedication and determination to fight anti-counterfeiting has tremendously contributed to bringing counterfeiters to justice in Saudi Arabia.”
Over the last few years, HP has been working closely with local authorities in both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to dismantle counterfeiting rings and criminal syndicates involved in the manufacture and sale of counterfeit print supplies.
HP regularly conducts free expert checks of suspicious printing supplies deliveries for corporate customers throughout the Middle East. HP said that these Customer Delivery Inspections (CDIs) protect customers that think they might have received counterfeit cartridges – in fact, around two in three shipments inspected in 2017 in the Middle East turned out to contain illicit products. These inspections thus protected numerous valued customers from risky fakes, HP added.
Through HP’s Anti-Counterfeiting and Fraud (ACF) Programme, the company actively educates its customers and partners to be vigilant against fake printing supplies. It also cooperates closely with local and global law enforcement authorities to detect and dismantle illegal operations that produce counterfeit HP printing components.
