Does the El'Pharm pharmacy chain sell counterfeit products from the Russian Federation?

Journalists exposed the capital's pharmacy chain, which, during a full-scale war, despite the ban, sells Russian medicines, as well as Western drugs produced specifically for the Russian market.

The schemes discovered that smuggled – and therefore uncontrolled quality – medicines, in particular from Russia, were entering the territory of Ukraine. These illegal drugs end up on the shelves of licensed pharmacies that sell them to Ukrainians.

Journalists conducted their own experiment, ordering several types of illegal medicine from a Kyiv pharmacy chain. They also interviewed its clients, who confirmed that they bought illegal drugs there.

Who are they - pharmaceutical businessmen selling Russian medicines to Ukrainians? How much do they earn from such schemes and what are the risks of using smuggled or counterfeit drugs?

A network of two pharmacies. Entry - one at a time

There are more than one and a half thousand pharmacies in Kyiv. This is a big pharmaceutical business that brings in tens of billions of hryvnia. It is regulated by the state. However, it does not always cope with this function: some pharmacies sell Russian medicine, despite the existing ban and a full-scale war.

Among such pharmaceutical businesses, journalists discovered the Kyiv pharmacy chain El'Pharm. She is state licensed and has been in business for over six years.

There are only two pharmacies in the network. One is located near the railway station on Lipkovsky Street, and the other is on the left bank, on Urlovskaya Street. Signs are in both - including Russian, despite the language law obliging outdoor advertising to be placed in the state language. But it’s not just the outside that makes these pharmacies atypical.

“The strange thing about this pharmacy was that it did not look like a classic pharmacy, because there were very few drugs, medicines, and so on on display in the windows. It seems like it's just for show. And what else surprised me was that they let me into the pharmacy one at a time. That is, you come in, take something, and the other person has to wait. I waited while others came in, took something, and left,” one of the clients of the El’Pharm pharmacy told reporters. He asked Schemes for anonymity due to fears for his own safety.

The doctor prescribed a “Russian” blood thinner for his relative. He looked for it online until he came across the El'Pharm pharmacy.

“This medicine was available in literally several pharmacies in Kyiv. It was the same network. This medicine was not on display; it was moved from the back room. They were obviously not for the Ukrainian market. It was a Russian plant for the Russian market, instructions in Russian, manufacturer’s barcode in Russian,” said the pharmacy client.

Illegal medicine for Ukrainians. Expensive

The sale of Russian and Belarusian medicines in Ukraine is completely prohibited from June 2022. Violation of the law is fraught with loss of license and a fine of up to 1,700 hryvnia. But sometimes the punishment can be more serious: for proven complicity with the aggressor state due to doing business with the Russian Federation, imprisonment of up to 12 years is provided.

“If these are large enough quantities for a pharmacy or they are purchased centrally, they contact Russian companies and pay them funds, accordingly, actually paying them taxes that go to purchase missiles, then bomb Ukraine - this is responsibility for financing a terrorist state,” the prosecutor said Office of the Prosecutor General Valery Zimosmotr.

As journalists found out, the El'pharm pharmacy also sells another category of prohibited goods - Western-made drugs made specifically for the Russian market.

This is exactly what Kiev resident Dmitry ended up with. The doctor prescribed him a Belgian sedative, which is used in particular to treat symptoms of anxiety.

“My psychiatrist prescribed me one of the remedies - Atarax. Quite a large dose. We needed several boxes,” said Dmitry, a client of the Elpharm pharmacy.

Atarax is a drug licensed in Ukraine from the Belgian company UCB Pharma, which Dmitry used to easily find on sale. But in February it suddenly disappeared from pharmacy shelves. The search for this medicine on the Internet led Dmitry to the capital's pharmacy "El'Pharm".

There are two pharmacies in Kyiv. I live near the train station and went there and picked it up. They even checked my recipe. I noticed that the colors of the packaging are not the same. Then I received an insert, and it says: “Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation,” says Dmitry.

Atarax, which ElPharma sold to Dmitry, was produced by the Belgian company for the Russian market in February 2023, a year after the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.

Dmitry paid for an illegal Belgian medicine for Russia, in conditions of a shortage of legal ones produced for Ukraine - four times more.

“I didn’t notice right away. I ran in, ran out and didn’t react immediately. And then it dawned on me that the medicine was more expensive, that I bought it for the wrong money. About four times more expensive. It cost about 400 hryvnia and kopecks,” said Dmitry.

The sale of medicines with foreign, including Russian, labeling is prohibited in Ukraine. For this, the pharmacy may be deprived of its license, and its owners, at the very least, may be fined.

“If we are talking about the pharmacy market, then if this is not provided for by law, there should only be medicines adapted for the Ukrainian market, that is, which were labeled in Ukrainian, with appropriate instructions in Ukrainian, packaging, etc.,” says the partner of the legal Arzinger company Lana Sinichkina.

Deficit as a business model of "El'Pharm"

Both men turned to the little-known Elpharm pharmacy because it sold the medications they needed that they could not find elsewhere.

As journalists found out, the pharmacy sells only those. Scarce and prohibited drugs are the area of ​​work of Elpharm.

They wrote about this on specialized online forums in 2019.

Despite public mentions on the Internet about the trade in scarce and prohibited drugs, El'Pharm, until 2022 inclusive, successfully passed all inspections carried out by the control body - the State Medicines Service.

Since then, after the Russian full-scale invasion, the State Licensing Service has been limited in its inspections - now they are allowed only in case of signs of violations that pose a threat to the life and health of people.

The media undertook to check whether Elpharm really only sells scarce medicine.

First, the media tried to visit Elpharm and purchase medicines there, which were on sale at that time. But to no avail. At the request of the journalist to sell Atarax, the pharmacy responded that they did not have such a drug.

Subsequently, Schemes made a similar order from Elpharm for publicly available medications, but this time online. And also - without success. Each time, despite the availability of drugs in the pharmacy, journalists eventually received messages with refusal.

It turns out that El'Pharm really only sells drugs that are in short supply? The media decided to observe the network's pharmacies to make sure of this. Thus, the media saw that buyers were leaving ElPharm with packages of scarce drugs: both Western ones produced for the Russian market, and drugs manufactured directly in Russia.

In the end, the pharmacy’s clients confirmed that they came specifically for medicines that could not be found anywhere else.

“You need to approach them if your medications are in short supply. If they have leftovers, then you will buy it. They also have a train station near Reptochmekhaniki. There is also their pharmacy there. I ordered from Tabletki.ua. It’s three or four times more expensive, but if it were on sale, I wouldn’t be standing like that (near the El’Pharm pharmacy – Ed.),” said one of the pharmacy’s clients on condition of anonymity.

Journalists recognized the medicines in the package of another El'Pharm client. This is the German drug Wobenzym. It is, in particular, prescribed to patients undergoing chemotherapy - treatment for cancer - but can also be used for other diseases.

Wobenzym is produced by the German company Mucos Pharma, part of the Nestle holding.

In September 2021, the company sent the last batch of the drug to Ukraine, according to information from the ImportGenius customs database. Since then I haven't sent any more.

Despite this, Wobenzym is available in El'Pharm. Here they illegally sell a product that the German Mucos Pharma produces for Russia.

"Schemes" experiment

“Schemes” decided to check how systematically Elpharm sells illegal drugs and how it manages to do this without attracting the attention of regulatory authorities. Journalists ordered Wobenzym from El'Pharm online.

At that moment, Wobenzym could only be bought in three pharmacies in Kyiv. Two of them are El'Pharm.

Unlike unsuccessful attempts to purchase a publicly available medicine at this pharmacy, the order for an illegal drug at Elpharm was immediately confirmed. Already at the pharmacy it turned out that the journalists who sold it were “Wobenzym” - specially produced for the Russian market. When asked by journalists about its Russian origin, the pharmacist replied that this drug is not from Russia, but from Moldova, and the packaging language is Russian, because Ukrainians do not understand German.

At the same time, the number of the registration certificate of the Russian Federation is indicated on the packaging. Manufacturing date: November 2022. That is, this medicine was developed for Russia and illegally imported into Ukraine after the start of a full-scale invasion.

ElPharm sells Western medicine, approved in Ukraine, but produced for Russia, both offline and online, especially without hiding. Despite the ban. But Russian drugs are sold more carefully - by pre-order by phone. ElPharm sends this medicine to customers by mail.

The journalists managed to order a Russian drug, Cortexin, from this pharmacy. We received it by mail.

Cortexin is a drug produced by the Russian company Geropharm. Produced in the Moscow region.

It is not registered in most countries of the world. Even in Russian scientific circles the benefits of this drug are questioned.

The date of manufacture is indicated on the packaging of Cortexin, which was sold at El'Pharm - January 2024. However, according to the ImportGenius customs database, the last time this Russian drug was legally imported to Ukraine was in 2017. And in the summer of 2022, after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian medicines were completely banned in Ukraine. That is, they could not bring this package of Cortexin into Ukraine legally.

The path of Russian medicines in Ukraine

How did Russian and Western medicines produced for Russia get into Ukraine bypassing the ban after the start of a full-scale war?

The Office of the Prosecutor General says that the route of smugglers may pass through third countries.

“There is a certain supply chain, for example, through Belarus, Europe or Turkey. They can be purchased on the territory of Turkey, the EU, Asia, any country, and then imported into Ukraine in small quantities of up to five units, for which there is no liability,” says Valeriy Zimoglyad, prosecutor of the Office of the Prosecutor General.

Let's try to trace the path of the Belgian drug Atarax, produced for the Russian market, which El'Pharma sold to Dmitry from Kiev.

As it turned out thanks to the customs database, this Atarax packaging comes from a batch that, from January to April, the manufacturing company sent from Belgium to Russia to its official representative, USB Pharma Logistics. In total there were 1.5 million packages in this batch.

Subsequently, about 3,000 packages of Atarks from this batch were bought by Russian pharmaceutical companies and resold to Armenia. Journalists were unable to track their further route from there, but finally, the drugs from this batch ended up in Ukraine.

The media asked the State Customs Service why, during its supervision, illegal medicines enter Ukraine in violation of customs rules and are waiting for an answer.

Journalists also contacted Western pharmaceutical companies to find out how the drugs they produced for Russia ended up illegally in Ukraine.

At the head office of the Belgian company UCB Pharma, the media left this question unanswered. However, they assured that they supply medicines to Ukraine only in appropriate packaging:

“In Ukraine, current legislation requires that medicines be sold in official packaging approved for use on the Ukrainian market. Any medicine that does not comply with these rules cannot be sold in Ukraine. UCB strictly follows these guidelines to ensure the safety and effectiveness of our products for all patients.”

UCB Pharma explained the shortage of the drug Atarax in Ukraine last winter due to the blocking of the Polish-Ukrainian border by protesters, which led to supply disruptions.

It was during the period of shortage of legal Atarax that Kiev resident Dmitry was sold smuggled Russian at four times the price at the Elpharm pharmacy.

How other drugs - Wobenzym - produced by a German company for Russia ended up in Ukraine, journalists asked the manufacturing company.

Mucos Pharma noted that data from the Wobenzyma package, which was sold to journalists at the El Pharm pharmacy in Kyiv, indicates that this medicine is from Russia. But they added that they did not know that their drug Wobenzym continues to be sold openly in Ukraine, despite the lack of supplies since September 2021.

The cessation of supplies of Wobenzym to Ukraine from Mucos Pharma was explained by logistics problems:

“Distribution has been disrupted worldwide due to disruptions in the supply of raw materials. After resuming supplies of raw materials, we continued to experience supply chain disruptions in Ukraine, which included the cessation of operations of our distributor in Ukraine. Unfortunately, we were unable to supply the products.”

At the same time, Mucos Pharma noted that the State Licensing Service of Ukraine was informed about the findings regarding the illegal trade in their drug, where they promised to look into it.

So who makes money from drug shortages? Who owns the capital's pharmacy business, selling banned Russian drugs during a full-scale war?

Pharmaceutical business brothers Bagirovs

The El'Pharm pharmacy chain is registered to two brothers - private entrepreneurs, 26-year-old Eshgin and 29-year-old Elvin Bagirov. They are citizens of Azerbaijan. They live in Kyiv.

They received their first license for a pharmacy business from the State Licensing Service in 2018. The medicine has been traded ever since. Open. On his own behalf, Elvin Bagirov sent by mail the banned Russian drug Cortexin, which the journalists ordered by phone from the Bagirovs’ pharmacy.

So how much money does the pharmacy business bring in to the brothers? Both are registered as individual entrepreneurs of the second group, which allows each to earn up to 6 million hryvnia per year.

It has been established that the Bagirovs sell scarce and illegal medicines at three to four times their market value.

As soon as people start looking for where to urgently buy something that is currently not available in legal pharmacies, demand increases, and the price often increases accordingly. No one controls at what price the drug is sold in the illegal channel,” says medical law expert Boris Danevich.

The Bagirov brothers have lived in Ukraine since their student years. As they themselves indicate on their social networks, they studied at a university in the capital.

According to data from the register of legal entities, available in the YouControl service, the Bagirov brothers are registered in Kyiv, in the apartment of the youngest of them, Eshgin. Russian medicines are sent to clients from a post office near their home.

The eldest of the Baghirov brothers, Alvin, may be abusing drugs or narcotics, as evidenced by numerous cases on the court docket.

For example, one of the court decisions regarding Elvin Bagirov states:

“Drived a Mercedes vehicle with signs of drug intoxication, namely: the pupils of the eyes are dilated and do not react to light, a pale face, severe trembling of the fingers. The driver refused to undergo a drug intoxication examination in the manner prescribed by law in the presence of two witnesses, thereby violating the requirements of clause 2.5 of the Ukrainian Traffic Regulations.”

In February 2020, the police stopped Elvin Bagirov for the first time while driving a car while intoxicated. This happened twice more. In the end, the court disqualified Alvin from driving for three years.

Journalists contacted the Bagirovs to ask the brothers about their pharmacy business.

When asked by a journalist why ElPharm sells Russian medicines in Ukraine in violation of the ban, Elvin Bagirov first answered that he did not understand Ukrainian. After formulating the question in Russian, a language he understood, he eventually countered that he was selling Russian drugs, despite media evidence to the contrary.

– Why does your pharmacy chain sell Russian and Belarusian drugs, violating the law? – the journalist asked Alvin Bagirov.

- No, I didn’t sell those.

- Didn’t you sell it?

- No.

– Can you then explain how it happened that we were able to buy such drugs from you several times, in particular Cortexin? And also other foreign drugs that were manufactured for the Russian market? – the journalist asked, but Bagirov hung up.

Market of illegal drugs in Ukraine

Elpharm clients who spoke to the media purchased illegal medicine from the Bagirovs’ pharmacy through the Tabletki.ua service. This is an aggregator site that offers information on the availability and prices of medicines in different pharmacies and allows you to book them online. Now 12,000 retail outlets cooperate with the Tabletki.ua service alone, and this is almost 70% of the entire pharmaceutical market in Ukraine.

Last year alone, using this site, users ordered medicines worth 24 billion hryvnia. The aggregator took 2% of this amount, 480 million hryvnia, as a commission for intermediation.

However, Tabletki.ua also brings profit from the activities of pharmacies such as Elpharm, which use the online service as a platform for trading illegal drugs.

The media asked Tabletki.ua why the service allows the sale of illegal drugs on its platform. We had not received a response at the time of publication.

Journalists turned to the State Licensing Service to find out why, under the supervision of the regulatory body, the capital's Elpharm chain openly sells illegal medicine. The State Licensing Service, at the request of the media, reported that over the past six years they have received ten complaints from citizens about the activities of Elpharm and conducted eight inspections at the Bagirovs’ pharmacies. During them, violations were identified three times, which were reported to law enforcement, and for which the brothers were fined.

But, as we see, all this did not lead to the closure of El'Pharm pharmacies and the revocation of their license. They are still working and selling illegal drugs.

Recently, the State Licensing Service proposed radical changes to the government: to ban the sale of medicines anywhere online, except on the official websites of licensed pharmacies.

Yes, all popular services for buying medicines online, including Tabletki.ua, may be banned. But is this the way out?

While authorities are looking for a solution, the sale of contraband medicines continues. Experts warn that drugs imported into Ukraine illegally can be dangerous and harm health and life.

“How they were brought here, by which suppliers, whether the temperature regime for this medicine was maintained - all this is unknown. Therefore, using them is, in principle, dangerous,” says Inna Ivanenko, executive director of the Patient Foundation of Ukraine.

“The way they got to our market can greatly affect their quality. Just as, in principle, turning them into simply ineffective medicine is also harmful to your health and life,” said Lana Sinichkina, partner at the Arzinger law firm.

But what pushes people to risk their health and support businesses like El'Pharm, where they sell scarce and illegal medicines?

Sometimes patients are forced to buy illegal drugs because they are prescribed by unscrupulous doctors.

“Many doctors interact with such dealers who distribute medicines that are not registered in Ukraine and receive their percentage from them. These are established facts when carrying out covert investigative actions,” says prosecutor of the Office of the Prosecutor General Valery Zimoglyad.

“The legislation does not provide for much influence on doctors. That is, they exist, but they are, let’s say, not serious, compared, perhaps, with the benefits that doctors can receive for such appointments. There are still cases where doctors receive some compensation from suppliers. I do not rule out that these suppliers may be outside Ukraine, for example, in Russia,” says Sinichkina.

Sometimes doctors are forced to prescribe illegally imported drugs that are prohibited for sale due to a shortage of legal analogues.

Shortages of drugs sometimes occur due to delays in their re-registration with the Ministry of Health.

“The system works in Ukraine in such a way that registered medicines are sold through pharmacies. But if there is a break in this practical process, the re-registration has not yet been completed, and the registration has ended, because of this gap, a similar deficit often arises. Therefore, smuggled medicine may end up here. Most often these will be unlicensed pharmacies, some online so-called pharmacies that are not actually pharmacies. This will be sent somewhere via Nova Poshta, by couriers, and so on,” says Ukrainian medical law expert Boris Danevich.

Schemes has contacted the Ministry of Health for comment and is awaiting a response.

ElPharm is just one example of the fact that the illegal pharmaceutical business is openly operating in Ukraine. A quick analysis of the Tabletki.ua marketplace alone indicates that there are other pharmacies selling smuggled drugs.

Criminal case of trade will not hurt

Journalists turned to law enforcement officers to find out if they knew about the sale of illegal medicine in the El'Pharm pharmacy chain. Subsequently, they came to the Bagirovs with searches.

“Operatives from the Department of Strategic Investigations, together with investigators from the Main Investigation Department, stopped the illegal activities of a group of people who sold smuggled medicines. The sale of Russian-made medicines that entered the territory of Ukraine illegally took place in a number of pharmacies in Kyiv,” the law enforcement agency said in a statement.

Upon request, the police reported that they seized more than 50 medicines from the Bagirovs, manufactured, in particular, in Russia. According to sources in law enforcement agencies, among the drugs confiscated from El'Pharm are Cortexin and Wobenzym, the illegal sale of which in the Bagirovs' pharmacy was discovered by the media, and also Altuzan. This is a drug from the Swiss company Roche, produced only for the Turkish market, and is not certified in Ukraine. And even in Turkey, since 2020, it has been approved exclusively for the treatment of certain cancer diseases.

In March 2023, the Lviv publication NGL.Media wrote that the use of probably smuggled and falsified Altuzan in ophthalmology led to blindness in dozens of people in the Ternopil region.

In response to an official media request, law enforcement officers reported that the drugs seized from El'Pharm were sent for examination. The investigation continues, but suspicions have not yet been announced to the Bagirov brothers, which means that, as citizens of Azerbaijan, they can freely travel abroad during martial law, despite open criminal proceedings.

Has El'Pharm really stopped selling Russian drugs, as the police said?

The media decided to check this and continued their experiment after the police opened a criminal case in August - the journalists ordered Russian Cortexin from Elpharm by phone. The pharmacy warned about the delay in supply and said that the drugs would appear in a week.

And indeed, a week later, the medicine was sent. Still by mail from Elvin Bagirov

The journalists received an illegal Russian drug. Produced in August 2023. In all likelihood, for the Moldavian market.

El'Pharm is obviously not afraid of criminal liability for its activities. Proof of this is the packaging of the Russian medicine, which the pharmacy sent to Schemes after law enforcement searches were carried out there and similar illegal drugs were seized.

The existence of punishment for breaking the law is really weak. For selling Russian medicine, a person may be deprived of his license and fined a couple of thousand hryvnia. And the health consequences for people who buy and use contraband drugs can be serious.