Balkan backyard clean-up

‘Organised murder'

Anyone in the Balkans who still thinks of corruption as being a victimless crime got a rude wake-up call last week. A Serbian police operation, codenamed Crab, led to the arrest of several top doctors and the local representatives of three European pharmaceutical companies. The accusations levelled against them are nightmarish. The doctors stand accused of taking bribes to buy cancer treatments, which they then overprescribed to patients in order to make more money.

Those arrested include the director of Belgrade's Oncology and Radiology Institute, the director of the institute's paediatrics department and its chief pharmacist. Local representatives of two Swiss drugs companies, Roche and PharmaSwiss, have been arrested as well as one from the British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca. They have been detained on suspicion of giving more than €1 million in bribes. More companies are under investigation.

Tomica Milosavljevic, Serbia's health minister, has denied that the patients were overdosed. However, Ivica Dacic, Serbia's interior minister, told a parliamentary committee: “I want to be clear and precise here: They prescribed more drugs than were needed by their patients to increase the consumption of those drugs so that they would get more money.”

Serbian opposition politicians have called for the suspects to be charged with “organised murder”. Both Roche and AstraZeneca have announced that they will co-operate with authorities in their investigations. There was no comment from PharmaSwiss.