Could counterfeit goods fund terrorism if border control becomes lax?
In a secret postal depot in Slough, Suvinder Kaur watches a steady trundle of parcels as they roll through an X-ray machine, and smiles with quiet satisfaction. The Border Force officer had spotted the brown paper packages bound in Sellotape in a haul of foreign post and noted they all had the same Chinese sender.
Seizing them off the conveyor belt, she rips one open to reveal a shoddy imitation Louis Vuitton bag with a Cartier watch stuffed inside. "Now why would you send something like this in the post if they weren't fake?" Kaur says, tossing them aside. A table nearby groans under the weight of a pile of fake Ray-Ban sunglasses, football shirts, watches and rip-off handbags.