Drug Company Officials Charged with Bribing Greek Doctors

No names or identifications were given but 13 people, including executives of a pharmaceutical company, were reportedly arrested on charges of bribing doctors in Greece to unlawfully prescribe medications.

Sources also not named told the state-run Athens-Macedonia News Agency (AMNA) that police had been investigating for months, tapping the phones of suspects to get the evidence.

A massive case file includes more than 100 people, also including pharmacists as part of the apparent conspiracy that was worth at least hundreds of thousands of euros in profiteering.

The suspects, apprehended in Athens and Greece’s second-largest city of Thessaloniki, were taken before a prosecutor but not named in keeping with privacy laws that are sometimes set aside if it involves celebrities or politicians.

The accusations include forming a criminal organization, fraud, false testimony, bribery and extortion of the public and private sector as well as issuing of bogus medical certificates. The suspects were kept in custody.