Model highlights booming trade in fake goods

Two top models competed for media attention in Brussels today. Both were stunning - but one was an expensive fake.

The real model - Yasmin Le Bon, wife of pop star Simon - was there to launch a major global campaign to combat the rising tide of counterfeiting and piracy of well-known top brand goods.

The fake model was a rare Ferrari, the centrepiece of a display of fakes demonstrating just how the counterfeit market has become a massive global business.

The Ferrari P4 was made in a back street factory in Thailand and is fitted with a Subaru engine, but could pass for one of the three genuine versions made in 1967.

The bright red copy of one which took the chequered flag at Daytona more than 40 years ago is not a replica, but a bid to fool a buyer that it is the real thing.

Yasmin Le Bon, posing beside the car for the cameras today, said: "Counterfeiting is now a really serious problem. We are no longer talking about just fake watches, but the counterfeiting of car parts, aircraft parts and even complete cars such as this Ferrari, which could have very serious consequences, not just in terms of fraud but in terms of people's safety.

"This is now a 500 billion dollar-a-year industry and I must say I now think about this kind of thing all the time, especially when I travel and consider that some of the aircraft parts may be fake."

She was speaking at the start of a "Fakes Cost More" anti-counterfeit summit in Brussels.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso was due to address the gathering later today about the impact on consumers of the thriving market in fakes.

The theme of the meeting was that fakes cost more than the real thing - whether they are unauthorised brake pads for cars fabricated using sand, medicines using unauthorised ingredients, or toys with dangerous parts.

Only last year the European Commission issued an international health alert after consignments of toothpaste containing anti-freeze extracts were found on markets throughout the world.

The World Health Organisation estimates that as much as 10% of all pharmaceuticals are fake.

And the FAA - the Federal Aviation Administration in America - estimates that 2% of the 26 million airline parts installed each year are counterfeit.

About 10% of all spare car parts in the European Union may also be counterfeit, according to latest statistics.