Interpol Starting Operation Against Counterfeit Drugs in Russia

First large scale initiative by Interpol in Russia against bogus medications.

ITAR-Tass reported on September 27th that Interpol Russia is initiating a large-scale operation against fake medicines.

Police Major General Timur Lakhonin, who heads Russia’s Interpol Bureau, is quoted in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta :

• “At present, a special raid was launched to detect the channel of counterfeit medicines. This is a new direction in our work. We found 1,200 websites in the Internet that sell fake medicines. These medicines are now being seized. The operation is underway in 25 countries and now it begins in Russia,” he said.

• “The most dangerous segment of the black market is counterfeiting of different antibiotics, contraceptives, steroids and weight loss medicines,” Lakhonin said.

This is a significant step forward for enforcing a critical health care problem and major criminal activity in Russia a country who is considered to have a relatively high percentage of its pharmaceutical supply chain impacted by fake drugs.

Secure Pharma Chain endorses more aggressive law enforcement against this criminal act but also encourages pharmaceutical supply chain members to proactively deploy technologies and best practice solutions to protect their inventories and consumers from these potentially lethal fakes.

To read the ITAR-TASS article, visit: http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15533991&PageNum=0

To learn more about anti-counterfeiting technologies, visit: http://www.xstreamsystems.net/.

Russia: Four Pharma Execs Found Guilty of Counterfeiting 50 Brands of Medicine - Get Slap on the Hand

Four pharmaceutical executives from a prominent Russian pharmaceutical company, Bryntsalov A, were convicted in Moscow of counterfeiting over 50 different brands of medicine but all they got was a slap on the hand. Tatyana Bryntsalova, Oleg Zharov Sergey Novikov, and another executive received a suspended sentence, parole and fines of 30,000 – 50,000 rubles (about $900 - $1,500).

The knock-offs were sophisticated immitations, which made it difficult for doctors or patients to distinguish the fakes from the genuine products. According to police investigators around $2.5 million of medicines were manufactured by the company in 2004 and 2005.

TheraFlu, Viagra, No-Spa, Mezim-Forte, Nootropil and Baralgin are among the American and European drugs that were imitated. So far, however, only the American company Pfizer has indicated that it will take any action to seek restitution from Bryntsalov A.

Some of these medications were found in Russian hospitals. One of the fake medicines, Cavinton, made its way to a large research hospital in Siberia. The doctors there unknowingly administered around 3,000 doses of the fake Cavinton to their patients. The investigation eventually traced the fakes to a warehouse in Moscow registered to Tatyana Bryntsalova.

Tatyana Bryntsalova, former director of Bryntsalov A, is known to have strong political ties in Russia. She is a sister of the pharmaceuticals and vodka business tycoon, Vladimir Bryntsalov, the founder of Bryntsalv A and a former presidential candidate.

To view the entire article visit MosNews.com.