The National Anti-Corruption Unit of the Judicial Police has completed an operation in Lisbon and the Algarve, during which several searches were made and four 'medical professionals' were arrested, one of whom was in possession of a prohibited weapon.
This operation has been to investigate “active and passive corruption, forgery of documents and qualified fraud."
The police now have good grounds to back up their suspicions that the 'medical professionals,' one Doctor and three reps working for pharmaceutical companies, were involved in a drug prescription scam that has cost the national health service “several thousand euros."
The detainees, three men and one woman, will be presented to the judicial authorities for a preliminary interrogation and to see if they can be allowed home, or stay in jail until full charges are made.
In the last six years (from 2011 to 2017), several scams have cost the National Health Service around €300 million, according to a source from the National Anti-Corruption Unit.
The Doctor in this latest case is from the Queluz health centre and is thought to have taken advantage of the new system for paperless prescriptions, proclaimed by the Government as a service with "greater security for professionals and users," but an open door to those who know their way around the IT system.
The three others in the scam, working for pharmaceutical multinationals encouraged the doctor to hand over codes that enabled the reps, then posing as members of the public, to go to chemists and buy drugs at low prices so they could hit their sales targets. These drugs later were either sold on, or binned.
By smashing their sales targets, the reps earned more money in commissions and bonuses and the Doctor earned trips abroad staying in luxury hotels.
The Doctor was arrested as he relaexed at an Algarve property owned by one of the drug company reps.
