CUBA-ECONOMY: Crackdown on Phony Havanas

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, May 14 1997 (IPS) - Cuban police have been cracking down on counterfeiters of the famed “Havanas” – the cigars acknowledged as among the best in the world and Cuba’s leading luxury export item.

Six clandestine factories have been dismantled in the western province of Pinar del Rio, where the best Cuban tobacco is grown, and 12 people arrested and charged with illicit commerce, They were accused of falsifying the names of internationally known brands such as Cohiba Esplendido, Montecristo A and Cohiba Robusto on inferior cigars and selling them as the real thing – worthg around 200 dollars a box.

Not only underground cigar factories have been hit by the government’s current offensive against producers of imitation name brand goods. Security forces have also raided clandestine installations producing rum, leather footwear and perfume. The counterfeit goods are elaborated with material siphoned off of public enterprises, and with adulterated products.

Havana cigars, which are sold in 700 formats in more than 80 countries, are the most expensive of Cuba’s foreign-exchange earners, which also include sugar, nickel, citrus fruit, fish and tourism.

Local experts say the packaging of the counterfeit cigars – which are poor-quality and made with inadequately cured tobacco – is similar to that of the real thing, and that only an expert or experienced smoker of Havanas can detect any of the roughly 200 details that distinguish the product.

Cuba’s soil, climate, traditional harvesting methods and the hand-twisting of the tobacco leaves give Cuban cigars their unique quality, which was not lost even at the lowpoint of the economic crisis that broke out in 1990.

Cuba exported 55.5 million cigars in 1995 and 71.8 million last year. Habanos S.A., which markets the cigars, predicts that 100 million will be sold this year, and 200 million in the year 2000. In the United States, which imposed an embargo on Cuba in 1962, some five million Cuban cigars are still being sold annually, more than three million of which are counterfeit, according to the local financial weekly ‘Opciones’.

Tobacco industry functionaries say nearly 30 percent of the harvest disappears between the countryside and the final product of the state-run factories. Although official figures are not available on the economic losses involved, experts believe they could soon run into the millions of dollars if the underground business continues to flourish.

The chain of counterfeiting runs from the countryside through the warehouses and factories to the companies that market the cigars.

In Havana it is possible to acquire rings, stamps, labels, invoices, certificates, cases and other packaging elements stolen from state-run installations. The counterfeit cigars are exported or sold in Cuba to foreign tourists, diplomats and entrepreneurs.

Cuban authorities first became concerned with the faking of cigars in 1995, when more than 30 clandestine workshops were raided by police and upwards of 3,000 boxes of cigars confiscated at Havana’s international airport.