A fully detailed series of articles by our own Don Luis - here is a sneak preview at the soon to be featured articles:

CUBAN COUNTERFEITS ARE BIG BUSINESS

In the opinion of the author, the business of making counterfeit cigars is very profitable, and even more so if the cigars are "Cuban".  With the greatly increasing demand on the very premium cigar market in Cuba, the normal safe-guards are becoming less and less reliable.  It is now widely speculated that the very government in Cuba might be surreptitiously sponsoring a good deal of this activity. 

The reasoning of this line of thinking goes like this:  There is just not enough prime tobaccos in the Vuelta Abajo region to satisfy the demand for the most famous Cuban cigars.  There is a plethora of lower, at times much lower-grade tobacco from the more eastern provinces.  The only way to produce dollars, sell the tobaccos, get some money into the hands of thousands of people is to candidly permit the counterfeiting of cigars.

While this might seem to be counter-productive, think of this:  Most people don't know the difference, nobody will buy un-known Cuban brands, and the money comes in regardless.  To Fidel, it must make sense, because there is no doubt that a major proportion of the cigars made under this scheme are coming from Cuba, as well as there can be no doubt that nothing happens in Cuba unless Fidel says it does.

What this has created on the positive side is the bolstering of Habanos S.A. as THE marketer of the true Cuban cigars.  And they are expanding exponentially all over the world, even in the Dominican Republic, the #1 producer of fakes of their own brands as well as a healthy imitator of Cubans, and perhaps the largest producer of hand made cigars in the world.  All of this only serves to promote the use of highly visible and reliable wholesalers and retailers in order to protect the producer and the consumer the world over.  The smaller, more or less fly-by-night factories are closing at a record pace, but enough unscrupulous players are left to make the buyer wary.