Drug mafia. Five individuals detained by the CBA
The CBA detained five persons suspected of participating in criminal activities of an organised crime group. The detainees were to recruit pharmacies, purchase medicines and then export them outside Poland.
The officers of the Regional Office of the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau in Białystok, supported by the officers of the Regional Offices in Katowice and Lublin, detained five members of an organised crime group dealing with illegal transfer of medicines abroad within the so-called reverse drug distribution chain. The activities were carried out in the Śląskie, Lubelskie, Mazowieckie, Małopolskie, and Łódzkie Voivodeships.
The investigators' findings indicate that the detainees were associated with an entity which, on the one hand, ran a pharmaceutical wholesale warehouse and, on the other, a fictitious outpatient clinic. The entity in question was one of the links in the so-called reverse drug distribution chain, through which drugs illegally purchased from pharmacies throughout the country were finally sold outside Poland.
It has been established that the role of the detained persons was to acquire drugstore managers or owners to cooperate with the criminal group. Then, drugs and medicinal products were obtained from pharmacies cooperating with the group, and subsequently exported outside the territory of Poland. The evidence indicates that the detainees recruited a number of pharmacies from all over the country to cooperate with the group, which between 2015 and 2018 sold medicines worth over PLN 13 million to the group. The detainees were transported to the premises of the Podlasie Regional Department for Organised Crime and Corruption of the National Prosecutor's Office in Białystok. There, they faced charges of participation in criminal activities of an organised crime group. The prosecutor applied non-custodial preventive measures against them.
In the course of the proceedings, 11 persons were identified altogether, whose role within the criminal group was to acquire owners of pharmacies for further criminal cooperation. The scope of those persons' operations covered the whole country, and pharmacies from small towns, and in some cases chains of several or over a dozen pharmacies, were acquired for cooperation. All those individuals were detained by the CBA officers in the course of preparatory proceedings which resulted in pressing charges against them. The total value of medicines illegally purchased by the group amounts to over PLN 113 million.
The case is in progress.
Public Relations Division of the CBA
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Fot. © belchonock / Photogenica
