A record seizure. A vast police operation carried out by 115 countries, including France, made it possible to get their hands on 20 million counterfeit medicines.
Doping products, erectile pills or promoting diets, the services of Interpol have just carried out the largest crackdown in this sector of the sale of fake drugs on the internet. More than 2,000 sites have been shut down and 550 online advertisements have been suspended.
Hailed today by all the press, operation Pangea VIII, deployed from June 9 to 16, also made it possible to dismantle a network and to arrest 156 people, specifies the newspaper’s website The world. “It also focused on Internet service providers, online payment systems and messaging services,” says the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM). The amount of the loot is estimated at 71 million euros.
More than 70% of the products seized came from Asia, mainly India, adds the ANSM. Six people who “illegally manufactured doping products” were arrested. In particular, they made anabolic steroids.
“Manufacturing methods that endanger the health, even the lives of consumers of these substances”, recalls the Europe 1 site. Colonel Bruno Manin, head of OCLAESP (Central Office for the fight against attacks on environment and public health), confirms: “Often, we are dealing with people from the world of bodybuilding, so people who have used these products and who are not aware that they are in the process of sell poison. »
