Pharmaceutical
Branches in Lazio, Campania, Abruzzo, Sicily and Sardinia
10 million SSN scam, even sex to pay doctors and pharmacists
90 people involved, 43 pre-trial detention orders
(Adnkronos Salute) - A scam against the National Health Service for about 10 million euros, 90 people involved, 43 orders for precautionary custody in prison and house arrest, 12 obligations to submit to the judicial police, 168 searches carried out, 14 requests for disqualification from the professional exercise. These are the main numbers of the operation of the Carabinieri dei Nas of Rome and Naples, called 'Apotheke', which thwarted a criminal organization made up of doctors, pharmacists, entrepreneurs and scientific informants. A system which, in order to bribe doctors and pharmacists, in addition to earning money, he also rewarded them with sexual services offered by Italian and Colombian prostitutes, managed by a Roman 'maitresse'. A system that had ramifications, as well as in Lazio, also in Campania, Abruzzo, Sicily and Sardinia. The criminal system, discovered through stalking, seizures and telephone interceptions, revolved around a Neapolitan entrepreneur, Tullio Raimondo Faiella, 48, owner of a drug distribution company with registered office in Grottaferrata, in the Castelli Romani area, operational in Naples. The man coordinated a group of scientific informants who had the sole task of bribing doctors and pharmacists to obtain false prescriptions for class A medicines (paid by the NHS) distributed by his company, sending them in person mainly to compliant pharmacies which, after having applied the punches removed from the medicines, they requested reimbursement from the NHS, as stated in the Nas report. The corruption was carried out both through money (usually percentages of 5-10%, calculated on the cost of the drug) and with gifts of various kinds, and with the offer of sexual services in favor of the doctors and pharmacists involved. The entrepreneur, in turn, distorted the balance sheet and balance sheet of his company by issuing false invoices for non-existent supplies of medicines to unsuspecting or compliant pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies. Not only. The Nas operation, which was attended by around 400 carabinieri, ascertained that the businessman himself had clandestinely transferred 100 kilos of paracetamol and 50 kilos of caffeine, without tax documentation, to a scientific informant operating in the Neapolitan hinterland, to allow informer to manufacture and distribute clandestinely produced medicines as well as to use them for the cutting of narcotics, such as heroin and ecstasy. The investigation therefore reconstructed a 'typical day' of the scientific informants involved in the scam. On the one hand, they procured false prescriptions compiled by corrupt family doctors, made out to unsuspecting patients and in some cases to people not affected by pathologies that required the use of those medicines, guaranteeing white coats the 5-10% on the price of the drug. The informants then made the 'tour' of the pharmacies which collected the prescription and supplied the medicines. And at the end of the day, then, they disposed of the products by throwing them in the rubbish bins. On the other hand, the in
