JEDDAH: Speakers on the second day of the First Arab Consumer and Brand Protection Forum at the Hilton Hotel here agreed yesterday on the need to come up with new mechanisms to combat what they called “globalization fraud” which has not spared even human blood, fruits and medicine and has become a real threat to many aspects of life.
Christopher Zimermann of the World Customs Organization called for the setting up of more specialized teams to monitor the new techniques of commercial fraud and said the organization has appointed 30 new experts in this domain.
US Ambassador Ford Fraker stressed the need to draft more stringent laws to protect intellectual property rights; he praised the rules being applied by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in this respect. He also called for reinforcing the organs concerned with protecting the world against commercial fraud.
“The commercial fraud has been extended to medicine and petrol stations and all the products which we use daily. May be the only thing that was not counterfeited was the head of the famous French soccer player Zinedin Zidane,” the ambassador said.
Talal Abu Ghazala, CEO of Talal Abu Ghazala Organization called for initiating a system to protect the geographical index and the famous names such as Makkah Al-Mukaramah and Petra. He expressed the readiness of his organization to cooperate with the Arab League to formulate a system for the protection of indexes and the establishment of a databank. He also called for an Arab agreement to protect geographical indexes.
Fawaz Al-Alamy, head of the Saudi negotiating team at the World Trade Organization (WTO) said commercial fraud causes about 65 percent of house fires, 25 percent of building collapses and 35 percent of road accidents which lead to the death of about a million people worldwide annually. “The world lost $780 billion including $56 billion in the Arab world alone last year due to commercial fraud,” he said.
Al-Alamy spoke at length about the various security challenges facing the world today and asked for firm application of the laws against fraud.
EU representative Luke Divan expressed the readiness of the European Union to cooperate in the initiative to protect geographical indices and the famous religious names and said many countries such as the UAE, India and Turkey were suffering from this phenomenon. The speakers were unanimous in their stand against commercial fraud and said the world must cooperate to put an end to it.