Major Anti-piracy Street Raids In Brazil

Farroupilha, Brazil (Top40 Charts/ IFPI Latin America) - During the past month, Brazilian authorities have conducted three major anti-piracy operations. On 5th October, authorities in the city of Farroupilha, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, seized approximately one million blank optical units, 200 burners and computer notebooks valued at around US$500,000 destined for pirates markets in Brazil. The seized goods came from the border town of Rivera in Uruguay.

Intelligence has indicated that for the past year the Duty Free Markets located in Rivera have become the new wholesale outlet for suspect blank optical media and burners. Most of these goods are sent to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay and Uruguayan Customs Service believes that so far this year approximately 35 million blank optical units have arrived at the Duty Free Markets in Rivera using fraudulent documentation.

The second major operation took place on 15th October. Brazilian authorities intercepted three so-called tourist buses coming from Ciudad de Este in Paraguay on a major highway used for shipping pirate goods in the tri-border. They seized a total of 210,000 CD-Rs and DVD-Rs containing pirated music and movies along with 185 burners and over 300,000 dollars in computer notebooks. Three people were detained. The Brazilian anti-piracy team, APCM (Associacao Anti- pirateria de Cinema e Musica) and IFPI Special Project operations in the tri-border area provided key information to conduct the operation.

On 18th October, the Military Police executed 18 search warrants in the well-known pirate market of Galeria Page. The market is located in the heart of Sao Paulo City's major commercial district.
A total of 105,000 DVDs and 18,300 CD-Rs were seized with illegal film and music products. This marks the third time in a year that Galeria Page was raided and APCM is looking into pursuing civil action against the owners of the market for permitting ongoing pirating activities.
IFPI Latin America congratulated La Receita, the Brazilian Federal Highway Police, the State of Sao Paulo Military Police and APCM on a job well done.