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A pharmacist from Póvoa de Lanhoso admitted today in court part of the crimes that are charged in a count of millionaire fraud to the National Health Service (SNS), in collusion with five doctors, and declared “very sorry.”
Testifying before the São João Novo criminal court in Porto, the pharmacist confessed to asking the doctors to write prescriptions (“transcribe prescriptions”, in his words) that did not correspond to a real prescription and without any consultation.
He did so, he argued, mainly because the NHS had returned “30,000 and 40,000 euros” of prescriptions, part of them for having changed prescription drugs for others with the same active ingredient.
In return, he said, he paid doctors a percentage.
“I’m so sorry. It was never my intention to harm the NHS. If it were today, I would close the door and do nothing,” he said, in testimony that lasted all morning.
The pharmacist admitted to having given a consultation space to one of the doctors involved in the process, the first to “transcribe” the prescriptions that the SNS had returned.
In this session, three of the five accused doctors were absent, two for alleging illness and a third for alleged error in communication with his lawyer.
The investigation and prosecution of the case, related to a mega hoax in the drug quota, included events associated with another pharmacy in the Braga district – this one in Prado, Vila Verde municipality -, a second pharmacist and a sixth doctor, in a process meanwhile separated. and that he will be tried on January 13, 2021 in the Matosinhos court.
In both cases, the SNS was injured for more than 1.3 million euros, according to calculations by the Public Ministry (MP) released through the regional prosecutor’s office in October 2016.
The defendants, including the pharmacies as collective defendants in the process, were accused of the crimes of qualified fraud, falsification of documents and computer fraud, the Porto Prosecutor’s Office announced then.
Pharmacies and pharmacies have also been charged with crimes of active corruption and doctors with crimes of passive corruption.
The events occurred from mid-2011 to 2015, centered on the activity carried out by the pharmaceutical defendants in Póvoa de Lanhoso, one, and Prado, the other.
The MP considered the accused that, in that period, the pharmaceutical companies “colluded” with the doctors to obtain “undue profits at the expense of the National Health Service.”
In the prosecution’s thesis, these achievements were “shared by all.”
According to the prosecution, the accused doctors issued fraudulent prescriptions, as they did not correspond to any real medical prescription, using data from their own patients or pharmacy clients – more than a hundred – who were indicated to them by the accused pharmacists.
“In these prescriptions, they invariably prescribe drugs with a high acquisition cost and with a high contribution rate from the NHS. [até 90%]”The accusation added.
The receipts were then delivered to the pharmaceutical companies, who presented them to the SNS for the payment of the contribution owed by the State, “as if they had really been sent to a pharmacy customer who was the beneficiary.”
The MP found an undue profit, in charge of the National Health Service, of 1.3 million euros, in the case of the Póvoa de Lanhoso pharmacy, and 120,000 euros, in the case of Prado.
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