As the World Cup ends, fake Viagra is seized in Durban

With South Africa’s World Cup festivities drawing to a close after the final match on Sunday, football supporters have been waving goodbye to the host country and returning home this week. Meanwhile as these fans have been leaving, something else has been quietly entering the country on a harbour in Durban: an enormous shipment of fake Viagra and other counterfeit goods.

In total police have said that they seized two million South African Rand’s worth of bogus impotence treatment (about £170,000). Alongside the erectile dysfunction drugs were other fake goods such as Adidas and Nike trainers, cigarettes and DVDs. In total police say the value of the goods mounted up to 64 million Rand.

A police spokesperson said: "These items are coming from China into South Africa. No arrests have been made yet, but we are investigating and believe a huge international syndicate is behind it.”

The international fake Viagra trade has grown substantially over the past few years. The problem is so great that Pfizer has hired ex-FBI and customs officials from the American government to help them track down those profiting from the trade.

As we reported last week, Pfizer is waging war against the fake Viagra trade which is believed to be making around $75 billion in profit every single year. As this latest case shows, this is a worldwide problem with police having recently raided fake Viagra storage facilities as such diverse countries as Israel, the UK and China.