Romania’s organized crime agency says 24 suspects will face trial on charges of trafficking more than 8 million prescription and other drugs abroad over an 8-year period.
The Cluj branch of the DIICOT agency said that the suspects set up an organized crime group in 2010 which “had the goal of procuring and sending abroad medicine that was under national control, without respecting the legal requirements,” a press release on Saturday said.
The leader of the organized crime group took advantage of the fact that he was familiar with pharmaceuticals and set up the network which illegally sent prescription drugs to the United States and 29 countries in Europe. The drugs were sold to online pharmacies.
The group set up a site and an online pharmacy that couldn’t be accessed from Romania to conceal their activity and began collaborating with similar sites abroad, delivering “considerable quantities of medicine that was under national control” without a legal prescription. Some of the suspects had no pharmaceutical qualifications.
They procured and delivered 8.44 million tablets between 2010 and 2018. The medicine included psychoactive drugs.
„The money obtained this way was laundered and a company was set up in a tax haven. About 5 million dollars was laundered this way,” the agency said.
Prosecutors froze 50 buildings, 13 vehicles, bank accounts and seized 160,000 lei and 40,000 euros as part of the investigation.
The drugs were sent to the UK, Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, Switzerland, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Hungary.
DIICOT said that online pharmacies were first authorized in Romania in 2019, but only for non-prescription drugs.
Crime-fighting authorities in the U.S and 29 European countries helped the investigation.
