Theft of anti-cancer drugs, the shadow of the Camorra

A few days ago
A band dedicated to theft and receiving stolen anticancer drugs has been smashes from the Flying Squad of Rome.

The theft took place at the warehouses of the Policlinico Umberto I in Rome: the band, consisting of eight men (but authorities continue to investigate), was composed of two storekeepers of the public facility, which had the task of removing the label "hospital use "drugs, and let out the latter Hospital, three" couriers "and three other people at the top, who organized the shipment, procured  customers, carried supplies and ran the criminal organization.

According to investigators the stolen drugs were chosen on purpose between the most expensive and harder to find on the market (anti-cancer, anti-rheumatic and anti-retroviral) and ended up regularly in the hands of the Camorra, which then provided for the rest of sorting, abroad or online.

History
Theft of anti-cancer drugs, the shadow of the Camorra


With a story passed a little over in silence, the Wall Street Journal revealed last May 1 a new frontier of business for the Mafia: anti-cancer drugs.

According to the influential U.S. newspaper, citing sources Italian and European criminal organizations, in particular the Camorra, would be in the shade of a huge illegal trade in European anti-cancer drugs stolen and counterfeit: a network organized and widespread that would worried a great deal of associations of physicians and pharmacists, as counterfeit drugs would be ineffective at best or, at worst, even lethal.

This was followed with regularity now, in the silence of the chronicles, theft of drugs and seizures of counterfeit medicines in Italy and Western Europe: although it is too early to sound the alarm, the Italian authorities for some time investigating this new business of organized crime, a business that puts the pharma-mafia in direct competition with the big pharmaceutical industry.

Even the EMA (European Medicines Agency) begins to worry: in mid-April, the Agency announced the discovery in Germany, Finland and the United Kingdom of certain vials containing Roche's Herceptin (a humanized monoclonal antibody used to fight breast cancer) counterfeit: the disappearance of the vials had been reported months before in Italy.

The EMA has also made ​​it known to other thefts of anti-cancer drugs have not yet been found, such as Alimta (manufactured and marketed by Eli Lilly) and Remicade (Johnson & Johnson and Merck), all the three pharmaceutical companies have collaborated to stay informed of close contact with the investigators and health authorities to shed light on the significant theft and to determine the source of counterfeit drugs found.

If we think that in the UK a vial of Herceptin can cost £ 400 it is clear that the profit margin resulting from illegal counterfeiting of these drugs is very "greedy" for criminal organizations: according to the director of the Italian Drug Domenico Giorgio theft of drugs in recent months in various parts of Europe would not be isolated incidents but would be part of a clear strategy and sprawling criminal organizations, in particular its Camorra, and a Russian citizen Cypriot yet unidentified .

The organization is precise and accurate: theft generally occur directly from the trucks that supply hospitals or by the same department of the hospital and then switch to a wholesaler, licensed, Italian. Instigators and manipulators, in short the 'big fish', however, remain unknown.
The wholesaler then receives orders and invoices for these drugs from other wholesalers, this time false, set up by mafia organizations in Hungary, Romania and Latvia.

"Organized crime is certainly involved: there is a central structure, apparently based in Italy, who commissioned theft of medicines in hospitals"

explained to the WSJ AIFA director, who added such as the Agency is already active on this front, assisted by the nucleus and the nuclei of the Police Fraud Commodities Carabinieri. The average theft is five loads per month only in Italy and often reconstructions of the facts provided by the truckers to investigators, the newspaper said the American, are not at all satisfactory.