Two men suspected of smuggling medicine into Moldova
Two Moldovan citizens are suspected of having smuggled medicine into Moldova for nearly two years. They would later sell the drugs to more than 70 pharmacies, mainly outside of the capital city, the police said.
Vasile Sarco, the head of the criminal investigation department at the Interior Ministry, told a news conference on Tuesday that the suspects were ordering the drugs by phone from wholesalers in Kiev and Moscow. The trafficking was done using two international bus routes – Chisinau-Kiev and Chisinau-Moscow. The smuggled drugs were being well hidden in the vehicles.
It was found that the smugglers also imported psychoactive drugs to Moldova, which were further sold to the drugstores. Following a raid at a drug depository in Chisinau's Buiucani district, the police discovered more than 1 million lei worth of smuggled medicine.
The drugs posed threats to human health because they were not certified and the information on them wasn't translated into the official language, making them hazardous for the patients with little education. Nearly 80 percent of the drug titles had no match in the national drug nomenclature, Vasile Sarco explained.
Another Moldovan citizen, who was working for an international company, is accused of smuggling personal hygiene products into Moldova.
According to Sarco, he was arrested while trying to smuggle products worth 240,000 lei across the Moldo-Romanian border. According to the police, the suspect brought in products worth €10,000 each week during one and a half year. The customers could order those products on-line, accessing a web shop which wasn't officially registered.