MHRA nets UK record £12.2m haul of counterfeit medicines
The crackdown, Operation Pangea VI, seized a drugs worth £26.8m and resulted in 58 people being arrested worldwide
The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) seized a record £12.2m of counterfeit and unlicensed medicines in the UK as part of an international crackdown on the illegal Internet trade of medicines.
The crackdown, Operation Pangea VI, seized a haul of drugs worth £26.8m and resulted in 58 people being arrested worldwide.
The operation also resulted in 9,610 illegal online websites being closed down or suspended through domain name or payment facility removal.
Coordinated by Interpol and carried out by 99 countries across the globe, the operation targeted the three main elements misused in the illegal website trade – the Internet infrastructure, the electronic payment system and the postal service.
Internationally, preliminary results show that more than 522,000 packages were inspected by regulators and customs officials resulting in the seizure of more than 9.9 million doses of unlicensed and counterfeit medicines.
In the UK, enforcement officers from the MHRA, with assistance from the Home Office UK Border Force and local police, raided addresses in connection with the illegal Internet supply of medicines.
This activity resulted in more than 3.7 million doses of unlicensed medicines worth approximately £12.2m, including 97,500 doses of counterfeit pills for slimming, hair loss and erectile dysfunction, being seized in the UK worth £525,000.
This year’s closure of illegal websites follows last year’s activity when approximately 18,000 illegal pharmacy websites were shut down through domain name or payment facility removal.
