Drug shortage uncovers large fraud in over 100 pharmacies

MADRID -- A sudden shortage of medication for treating cancer or against rejection in transplants, and treatments against leukaemia and epilepsy, has uncovered an illegal sales scheme by pharmacists all over the country. The police have been investigating over one hundred pharmacies in 14 autonomous regions for a year, centering it on the fact that several expensive medicines, provided by the government and among the most expensive, were being removed from the official, legal circuit, and prescribed in the normal way by doctors. The medicines were being bought by distribution companies at prices well below the norm and then sold on to companies or individuals abroad, where they obtained up to three times the cost in Spain. The illegality lies simply in the fact that pharmacies are not allowed to sell any medication to anyone other than patients, and most of it under prescription. The Spanish pharmacists' organization says the case is 'mostly residual' and it had to "defend the other 99% of our members," according to the President of the College of Pharmacists of Zaragoza, where the scam was first detected. There are some 22,000 chemists (farmacias) in Spain, and by no means are they all implicated in this fraudulent practice. Chemists and/or companies abroad involved include several in Germany, Holland and the UK, among others.

Treasury investigates Bankia for possible fiscal crime

MADRID – Yet another fraud recently risen to the surface from the muck: some 86 directors and executives of Bankia and/or Caja Madrid, to the value of some €15.5 million, all had access to individual credit cards issued by the banks themselves to its top people or to favoured customers’ executives. There was absolutely no control, no maxing out, on how or on what they were used, which accounts for items such as shopping (even for food), expensive travel and holidays, jewellery, etc. Some cards were used ‘only’ to €120,000, while others to significantly higher figures.//Without getting into too much detail (for fear of boring you, Dear Reader), the cases have now reached the desk of the judge in charge of the Bankia fraud case (yes, another one!), who the Anti-corruption Prosecutor has informed of possible tax evasion and other crimes.

(Editor’s Note: I suppose we’ll have to give some background to this case, too. Okay, we will, in due course… Maybe not: you can read all about it in El País in English.)

Granada Council relates the Alhambra fraud case with the ERE cases in Seville

GRANADA – The case of fraudulent tickets to the Alhambra was first discovered last year and, in true Spanish judiciary fashion, has only recently come to court. (More on the case coming soon, but it involves alleged irregularities in the sale of tickets and access control). The case has now taken a political turn, after the city Council wrote to the judge earlier in the week, alleging that political responsibilities are ‘evidently’ of the PSOE (in opposition in Granada) and the Junta de Andalucía. The letter, by Juan García Montero, Councillor for Culture and spokesperson for the Council, also demands