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A pharmacist from Póvoa de Lanhoso admitted in court this Tuesday part of the crimes attributed to her in an accusation for a million-dollar fraud to the National Health Service (SNS), in collusion with five doctors, and declared herself “very sorry.”
He confessed to having asked for recipes that did not correspond to the real recipe
When declaring before the São João Novo criminal court, in Porto, the pharmacist confessed to having asked the doctors to write prescriptions (“transcribe prescriptions”, in his words) that it did not correspond to a real prescription and without any consultation.
It did, he argued, primarily because the SNS had returned “30,000 and 40,000 euros” of income, part of them for having changed prescription drugs for others with the same active ingredient.
In return, he said, he paid doctors a percentage.
“So sorry. It was never my intention to harm the NHS. If it were today, I would close the door and do nothing, ”she 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 process
The investigation and prosecution of the case, related to a mega-mockery of drug reimbursement, 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 separate case that 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 drug stores have also been accused of active corruption offenses and doctors of passive corruption crimes.
The profits were shared by all
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 thesis of the prosecution, these profits were later “shared among all”.
According to the prosecution, the medical defendants wrote fraudulent prescriptions, as it does not correspond to any real medical prescription, using data from their own patients or pharmacy clients – more than a hundred – that were indicated to them by the defendant pharmacists.
“In these prescriptions, they invariably prescribe drugs with a high acquisition cost and a high contribution rate from the NHS [até 90%]”added the accusation.
The receipts were handed over to the pharmaceutical companies, who presented them to the NHS for payment of the contribution owed by the State, “as if they had actually 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.
