It comes as no surprise that fake Cricket World Cup souvenirs and memorabilia have been imported into Guyana and are already being distributed to vendors through distributors and wholesalers. CWC had moved, through elaborate legislation, to forestall this eventuality but no one who understands the ways of commerce and the opportunistic tendencies of the business community would have doubted that the laws would have been broken anyway.
Nor is the fake CWC memorabilia racket some “small- time” local scam invented by local “hustlers.” It has its roots in a highly organized, highly sophisticated operation that includes the expert, near flawless replication of the official CWC “swing tags” and logos and the “cutting of deals” with international garment manufacturers. The whole idea is to flood the CWC market – the Caribbean market – with an abundance of the fake items in order to threaten the marketability of the genuine CWC items.
Cheaper, fake CWC souvenirs and memorabilia are also a boon to the thousands of vendors and “hustlers” in Guyana and elsewhere in the Caribbean who have long concluded that the real money from Cricket World Cup will be made by the corporate sponsors and by big business. This, of course, is not to say that the illegalities should be condoned. The fact of the matter is, however, that people in Guyana and elsewhere in the Caribbean who are used to a subsistence existence are unlikely to pass up the opportunity that is likely to be created by the unprecedented influx of thousands of visitors with disposable foreign currency.
The CWC, of course, would have been well aware of the likelihood that just such an eventuality would occur, hence the Sunset Legislation and the thicket of licensing regulations governing the souvenirs and memorabilia. Each souvenir had to be approved by the CWC and – in the case of Guyana – producers were required to deal with a single, CWC-appointed licensee, Calabash Gift Shoppe.
The proprietor of the Calabash Gift Shoppe, an Attorney-At- Law who is by no means unschooled in the ways of business, is concerned but, nonetheless, philosophical about the problem. She has moved to the courts and has secured an injunction restraining the two known perpetrators from importing or marketing the fake items. The problem is that she has no idea whatsoever as to how much of what has been imported has already been distributed and at any rate the injunction does not cover the seizure of those items that have already been imported.
As for the undertaking given that the vendors selling fake items will be arrested and prosecuted, that is clearly a “long shot.” One suspects that the police will be so taken up with other responsibilities during the period of the Cricket World Cup that they are unlikely to be unduly distracted by vendors selling bogus items which, in many instances are virtually indistinguishable from “the real Mc Koy.”