Asians nabbed over fake products

By Arron Nyamayaro

Two Asians were arrested after they were found in possession of 10 000 fake door locks packaged and branded as Union Chubb Locks in Workington industrial area on Monday.

Following a tip off, police details descended at the warehouse at corner Bristol and Dumpfries roads and seized boxes of Union door locks and picked Haveliwala Ismail, 42, and Salim Patel of Pelliza Private Limited Company.

Salim and Ismail raised suspicion as they were selling their products under locked doors whenever a client visited their premises.

H-Metro is reliably informed that the original distributors of the Union door locks Chubb Locks Union Zimbabwe employees pretended to be genuine buyers before they were led to the warehouse and tipped police detectives.

Salim who refused to shed light about when he started his dealings in those locks told H-Metro that he was also duped by his suppliers and he was not aware that the locks were not from the real distributors of the locks.

“I was not aware that the locks were not from Chubb Locks Union. I relied on the packing and the branding,” said Salim refusing to name his supplier.

Managing director of Chubb Locks Union Zimbabwe, Devon Governder confirmed sending his workers to pretend to be buyers before calling police.

“We received reports that our customers were complaining of the products and started investigating,” said Devon.

“Our staff visited Salim’s Lucky Electrical and Hardware shop along Harare Street and ordered 5000 locks and they promised to supply us with any figure we wanted.

“They quoted US$7 per lock and refused to give us a discount or value added tax number which showed that they were in shady deals and might he evading Zimra.

“From their documents it shows that they being supplied by a Chinese company assigned to make products similar to ours and we could not wait to call police for help,” said Devon.

When H-Metro left; police were loading boxes of the fake products and recording statements from Salim and Ismail. H Metro