A WAR on fake clothing has been launched as it was revealed a staggering £4 MILLION worth of counterfeit goods are made in the county each year.

Blackburn is one of the worst areas in Lancashire for the production of designer duds with an estimated £1.5 million worth of items being shipped around the country and even as far as the Soviet Union.

Trading Standards officers have launched a series of raids on factories thought to be making the goods, which include top names like Armani and Calvin Klein. Last week 400 pairs of fake Levis jeans with an estimated street value of £16,000 were seized.

And the factory in the Audley area of Blackburn, had the capacity to produce 1,000 more pairs, according to officials.

Lancashire Trading Standards special investigations officer Tim Coglan said Blackburn and Preston accounted for 25 per cent of the UK's counterfeit denim goods market.

He said: "These people make anything from 500 to 1,000 per cent profit.

"Jeans seem to be the most popular fakes because they're easy to produce and are turned out in the hundreds from sweat shops.

"Terrorists are known to be involved in counterfeiting operations around the country and use the money to buy weapons but there is no indication the IRA has been involved in any Lancashire operation.

"Drug dealing and money laundering schemes are all tied-in with fake clothes. It's a worldwide operation involving big money." Senior Trading Standards Officer Mandy Green said: "Companies like Levis will tell you that fake clothes are very poor quality but the average person would not know the difference."

A shady network of people are involved in the fraud.

It starts in factories where people working in Dickensian conditions make the goods by sewing brand-name labels and buttons on to denim. Sometimes people carry out work from their homes.

Items then go on to distributors who sell them to their contacts and from here they reach the public.

All items seized by trading standards are eventually shipped to the needy in Bosnia and Romania.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.