Court finds Turkish company guilty of selling fake L’Oreal products

Dinçer Gökçe ISTANBUL

French cosmetics giant L’Oreal has won a lawsuit against Turkish retail chain EVKUR by claiming EVKUR sold fake L’Oreal products. The court has decided to collect the products that have been verified as fraudulent and destroy them. It also decided that EVKUR would pay compensation to L’Oreal.

L’Oreal sued EVKUR, which has over 80 stores across the country, in 2009. Everything began when a consumer from the northwestern province of Bursa bought mascara from an EVKUR store, according to the court documents. She thought she had bought L’Oreal mascara, but she noticed the product looked different from other L’Oreal products in other stores. When she had asked why, an EVKUR employee said this was L’Oreal’s newest product and it was normal for her to not find the product elsewhere.

The consumer still had doubts and decided to write about the issue to L’Oreal. The French company saw the product was fraudulent after a series of examinations had been made. A number of L’Oreal employees then visited the store as if they had been ordinary shoppers. They discovered the products were not on the shelves, but behind the tables.

L’Oreal then filed an application of complaint to the attorney’s general office in Bursa. The police found around 116 fraudulent cosmetic products in the store.

In the court, EVKUR’s lawyer said the fraudulent products were bought from wholesaler D-Parfümeri and EVKUR did not know they were fraudulent. EVKUR, which has around 500 million Turkish Liras of equity capital and employs around 2,000 people, does not need to buy fraudulent products, said the lawyer.

The named wholesaler did not accept the claims, according to the court documents.

The court then decided to collect and destroy the fraudulent products in EVKUR. EVKUR was fined 3,000 liras of compensation to pay to L’Oreal.