Cyprus took part in the global Interpol operation that in the space of a week seized over three million illicit pharmaceuticals, including covid tests, worth about €10 million.

The global trade in illicit pharmaceuticals is very lucrative activity in which organised crime is involved, police said in a statement on Friday quoting Interpol.

To tackle this phenomenon, Interpol, working with organisations such as EUROPOL, the United Nations, the World Customs Organisation, the World Drug Organisation, launched for the fifteenth time this year the Global Operation PANGEA XV, which took place between 23-30 June, 2022 in 94 countries.

Globally, law enforcement bodies made more than 7,800 seizures of illicit and misbranded medicines and healthcare products, totalling to over 3 million units. Furthermore, they shut down or removed more than 4,000 web links containing adverts for illicit products, opened more than 600 new investigations and issued over 200 search warrants.

Enforcement actions had disrupted the activities of at least 36 organised crime groups.

“Selling counterfeit or illicit medicines online may seem like a low-level offence, but the consequences for victims are potentially life-threatening,” said Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock, explaining that law enforcement agencies had to work together across borders to effectively protect consumers.

During the operation in Cyprus, police said 462 pharmaceutical preparations in the form of pills, sprays and gels and 123 preparations of food supplements which are not licensed for import and marketing for sale in the Republic were seized and several packages were checked at parcel sorting points.

Four websites offering illegal pharmaceutical preparations for online sale were identified and the competent authorities were alerted to the cases, police added.

As part of the operation, duty-free tobacco products, 810 canisters of nitrogen dioxide (laughing gas) and electronic cigarettes that were not adequately marked were also seized.

The authorities warned the public to be particularly careful when purchasing and using medicines or other preparations offered for sale on the internet or obtained in any way without a prescription and the advice of a doctor.

“The use of such preparations can have serious effects on the human body with unforeseen consequences,” police said.

The operation in Cyprus was carried out with the participation of the Cyprus Police, which was responsible for the coordination, the pharmaceutical services, the customs department, the postal services department, the health services department, the medical equipment unit, the industry and technology department, the state lab and the veterinary services.

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings .

As is common practice with almost all professional websites, https://cyprus-mail.com (our “Site”) uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your device, to improve your experience.

This document describes what information they gather, how we use it, and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the Site’s functionality.

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases, there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to the site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not, in case they are used to provide a service that you use.

The types of cookies used on this Site can be classified into one of three categories:

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser’s “Help” option on how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies may affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

In some special cases, we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. Our Site uses [Google Analytics] which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the Site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the Site and the pages that you visit so that we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.

Google Analytics is Google’s analytics tool that helps our website to understand how visitors engage with their properties. It may use a set of cookies to collect information and report website usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors to Google. The main cookie used by Google Analytics is the ‘__ga’ cookie.

In addition to reporting website usage statistics, Google Analytics can also be used, together with some of the advertising cookies, to help show more relevant ads on Google properties (like Google Search) and across the web and to measure interactions with the ads Google shows.

Learn more about Analytics cookies and privacy information.

An IP address is a numeric code that identifies your device on the Internet. We might use your IP address and browser type to help analyze usage patterns and diagnose problems on this Site and improve the service we offer to you. But without additional information, your IP address does not identify you as an individual.

When you accessed this Site, our cookies were sent to your web browser and stored on your device. By using our Site, you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies.

Hopefully, the above information has clarified things for you. As it was previously mentioned, if you are not sure whether you want to allow the cookies or not, it is usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it interacts with one of the features you use on our Site. However, if you are still looking for more information, then feel free to contact us via email at [email protected]

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.