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The Private Street Life
of a Fake DVD Seller

DUBAI — Every day without fail, an Asian expat carries his satchel to hundreds of homes across the emirate to sell pirated DVDs.

While his actions could land him in jail, ahead of deportation, he says he must pay back a debt which brought him to the country.

‘I have a debt, everyone has a debt,’ he said. ‘None of the money is mine.’

X.W., who declined to give his real name, is one of the only visible elements in a vast and shadowy criminal enterprise, which is now more lucrative for mafia gangs than the drugs trade.

Officials say that DVDs are copied for around Dh3 each and are then sold on for Dh10 — offering a 230 per cent profit.

A kilogramme of heroin, on the other hand, can offer a profit of just half that.

‘There are also less risks attached,’ said Khalid Babiker El Nour, a senior adviser at the Legal Affairs Department of Dubai Customs.

‘DVD sellers face only around three months in jail, compared to 10 years for selling drugs. It’s a logical choice for most mafia gangs today,’ he added.

It is this enterprise which police and customs officials are trying to close down in the emirate, but the difficulties they face are often overwhelming.

Little information is available on the number of DVD sellers across the country, or how the profits are moved around the world. Also, the movement of fake DVDs into the country is also becoming increasingly difficult to trace.

El Nour said that three years ago Dubai Customs intercepted a shipment of over a million pirated DVDs, which were hidden in plastic industrial tubes within cargo containers. However, the high cost of copying the films, coupled with the cost of shipping, has encouraged gangs to look at new ways of importing pirate DVDs. ‘Many of these copied films are brought into the country through the airport on a USB drive,’ said El Nour.

‘Then they are burned onto disks at many locations across the country — most of them residential addresses.’

Because of difficulties in gaining permission from Public Prosecution to raid an address, police and customs officials had to be rigorous in gathering intelligence, said El Nour, while adding that pirate DVD makers used technology that would enable 100 copies to be made within three minutes. X.W. said he and a small number of colleagues had bought a large batch of DVDs from a wholesaler in Sharjah, but did not say where they were located. UK group Anti-Slavery International believes that DVD sellers arrive in countries such as the UAE as illegal immigrants, and then are forced to pay off the cost of their transport.

‘They are willingly brought into the country and are then made to pay off large debts,’ said spokesman Paul Donohoe.

martin@khaleejtimes.ae