By Patrick Mathangani

The dirty secrets of Kenya’s counterfeit merchants can today be exposed.

A wide-ranging investigation by The Standard on Saturday revealed an underground trade driven by raw greed, and where traders care less for the health of consumers.

From the sprawling estates in Eastlands’ inner ghettoes to downtown Nairobi, we went undercover and ventured into dens where traders are engaged in the underground business of producing a wide range of products.

Consumers should be alarmed to learn that some of the consumer goods they purchase with full confidence as to their quality are harmful concoctions that can ruin their health.

The Standard on Saturday was able to buy packaging material that resemble genuine ones and industrial detergent.

The trade has blossomed into a thriving "cottage industry" — meaning scores of fake products are made at people’s homes.

And a bigger scam lies in tax evasion, as the counterfeiters bypass all laws and regulations amid poor policies and weak enforcement that have failed to stop them.

We established there is little regard for quality or hygiene, and consumers are being offered products that could lead to poor health or even death.

In Eastlands, where we bought materials for making fake Toss, a popular detergent among Kenyans, the businessmen offered to sell dozens of other phoney household brands.

The resources to make them look genuine and are available in the thriving black market. Along Nairobi’s River Road, we easily bought Kenya Bureau of Standards labels that show products are inspected and given a clean bill of health.

During a raid in Mukuru-kwa-Njenga slum where suspects were caught packing British American Tobacco products, the counterfeiters were also found with fake Kenya Revenue Authority tax stamps that are mandatory for tobacco products.

The raid witnessed by The Standard on Saturday also yielded dozens of printed packaging papers for popular cigarette brands, including Sportsman and Safari.

The Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM), which has unsuccessfully been battling the counterfeiters, said the trade is costing the economy billions of shillings.

"Manufacturers lost Sh50 billion between 2008 and 2009," said KAM’s board member and chairman of the anti-counterfeits committee Polycarp Igathe.

The counterfeiters also make their money by avoiding taxes, and therefore selling products at prices that are attractive to retailers.

The trade thrives in Kariobangi Light Industries, a dusty and desolate zone of jua kali sheds. With makeshift machinery or even none at all, counterfeiters work at night to pack the fake goods by hand.

Sources said the big time counterfeiters lock up employees in the premises, where they work overnight. Here, our team posed as traders with a newly opened kiosk and were offered household products including Royco (spice), detergents such as Topex, Jik and Omo, and the skin protection jelly Vaseline.

Also offered to us were popular drinking spirits such as Kenya Cane, Kane, Richot, Viceroy and Smirnoff Vodka.

After a 25-kg bag of fake powder soap and fake Toss packaging materials, The Standard on Saturday crew investigating the scam was also given lessons on how to package the detergent at home and how to make it look genuine.

Sources said unscrupulous printers make packaging materials for the products, while others are smuggled out of industries by employees.

In other cases, the traders use recycled plastic cans, which they only wash before filling them up with the required product and repack it to pass it off as new. This was the case with Vaseline and Hewlett-Packard printer packages, which we purchased clandestinely in Nairobi.

Like the trade in drugs, the counterfeits business is highly secretive and joining is by introduction only.

In Mukuru, one man caught in the business told The Standard on Saturday, said he hardly knew the people who sell him the packaging materials or the fakes.

"They never give you their phone numbers. They call you from a public phone and give instructions on where to pick them," he said.

"They won’t even let you pay by M-Pesa lest you know their number," he added. M-Pesa is the popular money transfer service offered by mobile phone operator Safaricom.

Detectives told The Standard on Saturday people such as those arrested in the slum were mere foot soldiers used by the fat cats to sustain the chain of supply.

However, rampant corruption within the police force was blamed for the thriving trade. A detective who has been investigating the traders in Kariobangi said several weeks of surveillance revealed police have been collecting protection fees.

"They keep driving in and out of the places where these products are made," said the detective, who asked not to be named for fear of blowing his cover.

He said the most notorious officers were from Kasarani and Buru Buru police stations.

Further, detectives said they received death threats and stern warnings to stop snooping or risk getting harmed.

Once, when a contingent of police and security officers for a beer manufacturer tried to raid the premises of a counterfeiter, they discovered policemen attached to Kenya Revenue Authority had forewarned him of the raid, a detective said.

Kenya’s newfound love with China has created new avenues for counterfeiting, as it is now easier for even individuals to trade. China is among the world’s top copycats, and Western nations have been pressuring Beijing to clamp down on the practice.