Mexico raids stores selling counterfeit Chinese goods, vows national crackdown

Mexican authorities raided a massive complex of stores selling counterfeit Chinese and other Asian goods in downtown Mexico City, and vowed on Friday to take the crackdown nationwide.

Over 200 police, marines and inspectors raided a building known as “Mexico Mart” in the city’s colonial centre on Thursday and seized around 90,000 counterfeit products that masqueraded as name-brand goods.

They seized a total of over 262,000 products that had no receipts, import documents or, in some cases, even labels.

It is not clear if the counterfeits – which included imitations of Marvel, Sanrio, Disney and Nintendo products – were part of the 262,000 product count, or were counted separately.

Officials said it took seven hours to seize all the merchandise.

The entire facade of the building is labelled in Chinese characters, as are most of the stores inside.