Police check warehouse of Athena Việt Nam Company. Photo courtesy Phú Thọ Police

PHÚ THỌ – The Phú Thọ Provincial Police have initiated legal proceedings and detained Đường Văn Thiết, the director of Athena Việt Nam Manufacturing and Trading Co., Ltd, in connection with a large-scale counterfeit cosmetics operation.

The arrest follows a raid by the Phú Thọ Economic Police Division on the company's facility in Thanh Miếu Ward, where they uncovered the production of fake beauty products. Thiết is now facing charges for the "offence of producing and trading counterfeit goods".

During the raid, authorities seized a substantial amount of illicit goods. An initial count revealed nearly 5,000 units of counterfeit Athena-branded sunscreen and over 8,600 other finished cosmetic items, including multi-purpose creams, facial cleansers, perfumes, and shampoos. All products were packaged and ready for market distribution.

Authorities revealed that the company deliberately misled consumers by printing blatantly false claims on its sunscreen labels. According to the investigation, Thiết approved packaging that advertised the sunscreen with an SPF of 50+ and claimed it could block 98 per cent of UVB rays, despite having no analysis of the product's actual composition or effectiveness.

The deception was exposed by a forensic report from the Ministry of Public Security's Criminal Science Institute. The report, dated July 1, found that the sunscreen's actual SPF was only between 4.2 per cent and 26.6 per cent of the level advertised on the packaging.

This discrepancy is legally significant. Under Government Decree No. 98/2020, any sunscreen product with an actual SPF below 70 per cent of its claimed value is officially classified as counterfeit goods.

The case is currently under further investigation. VNS