// American candy shops on Oxford Street have over £100,000 worth of counterfeit or illegal chocolate bars and vapes seized
// Council officials are aiming to crack down on the US-themed sweet shops
Oxford Street’s American candy shops have had over £100,000 worth of counterfeit or illegal chocolate bars and vapes seized earlier this week.
Trading standards seized a huge haul of goods on Tuesday, including 2246 counterfeit Wonka Bars, with a raid worth £22,000 from one shop alone.
Council officials are aiming to crack down on the US-themed sweet shops, which it claims are using the stores for tax dodging.
READ MORE: Oxford Street American candy shops probed over tax dodging claims
Tuesday’s raid of three unnamed shops also resulted in the seizing of some 2838 disposable vapes, which were counterfeit or had excessive nicotine levels.
Meanwhile, over 200 toys with no safety labels were grabbed, alongside more than 1,300 counterfeit mobile phone covers.
Other products seized included counterfeit Rolex watches, Apple Ipods and hoodies while Shisha products and chargers were also removed for their lack of health and safety warnings.
The leader of Westminster City Council, Adam Hug, called for “greater transparency in company ownership with further reforms for Companies House”.
Over £100k worth of counterfeit or illegal goods on my table seized yesterday from American Candy Shops on Oxford Street by our hard working @CityWestminster trading standards officers. As I was telling @VanessaOnAir we need landlords to take responsibility about who they let to pic.twitter.com/BahCAYegby
— Adam Hug (@AdamHug) June 15, 2022
“This needs to stop and we will be stepping up pressure on landlords to make it clear they are responsible for Oxford Street being overrun with these kinds of stores. The people selling overpriced and often out-of-date sweets are cheating the UK taxpayer and very often swindling their customers into the bargain,” Hug said.
Westminster City Council said on Wednesday that it had seized counterfeit and illegal goods amounting to around £574,000 from American candy and souvenir stores so far.
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