Turkish police detain medicine fraud suspects

By Alptekin Soykan and Halil Demir

ISTANBUL (AA) - Anti-organized crime officers arrested 28 suspects in cities across Turkey on Wednesday in an investigation into medicine fraud, police said.

Turkish security forces simultaneously raided numerous addresses in Istanbul, Ankara and five other provinces after a two-year police surveillance operation.

Istanbul's chief public prosecutor’s office issued arrest warrants for 46 people, including doctors, pharmacists and owners of pharmaceutical warehouses suspected of being involved in the gang.

The syndicate, which has supplied fake electronic prescriptions by capturing the doctors’ passwords from the national health system, is said to have provided cancer, diabetes and hemophilia drugs through the patients’ IDs.

Wednesday’s indictment also claimed that the suspects sold high-priced drugs to Azerbaijan, Syria, Egypt and Iraq in illegal ways.

The fraud allegedly cost Turkey six million liras ($2 million) in lost revenue.

*Anadolu Agency correspondent Ilker Girit contributed to this story from Istanbul.