The Brand Owners Protection Group (BPG), the largest non-profit organisation in the Gulf committed to combating counterfeit trade, has elected Abdulla Hasayen, anti-counterfeiting manager at Nokia, as the group’s new chairman.

Abdulla Hasayen has been managing Nokia’s anti-counterfeiting activities in the Middle East and Africa since October 2007. He deals with enforcement authorities in the region on regular basis, including providing training for enforcement officials and inspectors on how to identify counterfeit products.

Based in Dubai, he has been working closely with Dubai Customs and the Department of Economic Development to control the flow of counterfeit products.

Since joining the Brand Owners Protection Group in 2008, Hasayen has created a number of solid initiatives to fight counterfeit products in the GCC and to improve the monitoring process of enforcement authorities.

Owing to his expertise and experience on intellectual property rights protection, he was elected as co-chairman in 2009.  He has also been working on strengthening enforcement and monitoring practices in a number of African countries such as Nigeria and Kenya, where he coordinates these efforts with top government officials, IPR specialists and anti-counterfeiting groups.-TradeArabia News Service