Gucci America Inc, the luxury company that is owned by Paris-based PPR SA, asked a US judge to hold Bank of China Ltd in contempt for failing to turn over documents and to order it to pay $4 million.
Gucci, along with Chloe SAS and Alfred Dunhill Ltd, a unit of Cie. Financiere Richemont SA, said in court papers filed last night that Bank of China has refused to surrender records of companies against whom they won a $4.3 million judgment in a fashion-counterfeiting case. The judge previously ordered Bank of China, which wasn’t a defendant in the counterfeiting case, to turn over documents.
A Bank of China account was “a central instrument” in the counterfeiting scheme run by companies such as wholesale- replica.com, Gucci and the other plaintiffs said in a filing in federal court in Manhattan.