New means of counteracting illegal export of medicines based on invoices issued to a foreign company

May a Polish pharmacy ship large quantities of a drug to a foreign entity ?  The Central Pharmaceutical Inspectorate seems to think not. Experts, meanwhile, argue that the relevant laws are imprecise, and day-to-day market practice has already brought examples of exploitation of the loophole.

As DGP learns, Polish pharmacies have recently been observing a spike in cases of people walking in off the street and asking to buy several hundred, or over a thousand, packages of an OTC drug, e.g. one containing ibuprofen, and asking for a VAT invoice issued to a foreign entity, e.g. one registered in the UK. Experts entertain little doubt that this is the new modus operandi of criminal groups active in illegal cross-border medicines trade, officially referred to as the inverted distribution chain (…)

The full text of this article is available (in Polish) in Dziennik Gazeta Prawna (3.03.2020). If you are interested in an English-language version, please contact: kontakt@gessel.pl