Skinny without good: pharmacy owner will be tried for illegal "Ozempik"

On February 25, Lefortovo District Court will start considering a criminal case of illegal trade in the drug "Ozempik" in a Moscow pharmacy. According to the investigation, a doctor of one of the capital's polyclinics and the owner of the pharmacy sold the popular drug after the official withdrawal of its manufacturer from the country and the cessation of official supplies. "Gray" drug was not tested for authenticity and did not have the mandatory labeling confirming its quality. At the same time, the market is now flooded with fakes of "Ozempika", which can cause the most unpredictable side effects, up to blindness and thyroid cancer, doctors said. What is the danger of "gray" trade "Ozempik" and what punishment for it may follow - in the material "Izvestia".

How the doctor of the polyclinic became an illegal trader "Ozempik"

The owner of the Moscow pharmacy "Impact" (now closed, formerly located on Gospitalny Val Street) Nargiz Shapieva and pharmacist Yasmina Alikulieva face a real prison sentence for illegal trade in "Ozempik", lawyers believe. Their criminal case on trade in counterfeit goods and provision of services that do not meet safety requirements, on Tuesday, February 25, will begin to consider the merits of the Lefortovo district court of Moscow.

The diabetes drug of the Danish company Novo Nordisk, one of the effects of which is weight loss, is not officially supplied to Russia since November 2022. According to the investigation, the owner of the pharmacy Nargiz Shapieva and her husband Ramazan Shapiev took advantage of the vacuum created in the market and the incessant demand for the drug. They began to buy Ozempik from private suppliers and illegally sell it in their pharmacy, Yekaterina Ilinykh, an investigator at the Lefortovo Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee, told Izvestia.

- "We believe that they have been illegally selling Ozempik since at least 2022, but they were caught only in December 2023," the investigator said. - During the control purchase, they "past the cash register" sold the drug reserved in advance by the client.

Izvestia was previously convinced that "gray" Ozempik is freely sold in Russia, including in pharmacies, in the course of its own investigation. Experts estimate that the illegal turnover of the drug may reach 1.5 billion rubles a year, even despite the availability of domestic analogs.

When questioned, Nargiz Shapieva said that she initially purchased Ozempik for herself to lose weight, but later her husband became interested in the drug and its potential. He agreed with the supplier of the drug, a certain Rosa Vasilievna, whom they found through Telegram, to supply them with Ozempik on a regular basis.

In 2021, the man persuaded his wife to open a pharmacy business and register a legal entity - LLC "Impact".

At the interrogation Ramazan Shapiyev did not deny his guilt and asked to bring him to criminal responsibility instead of his wife, who worked as a doctor in a Moscow polyclinic in parallel with the control over the pharmacy. However, according to the documents, only his wife is related to the pharmacy, which means that she has to answer to the law.

The second defendant, a pharmacist Yasmina Alikuliyeva (she has two young dependent children), said during interrogation that she was invited to work in the pharmacy by Nargiz Shapiyeva, but was not officially employed.

The duties of the pharmacist included serving customers who came to get prescription drugs without a prescription. She had to sell such drugs without a cash register receipt and record the sale in a work log. For each product sold in this way she was entitled to 5% of the proceeds.

According to Ekaterina Ilyinykh, the pharmacy kept track of the "fake" medicines in handwritten form in a special journal. The sellers kept rough notes in a notebook and sent daily reports to a common group in messenger. Money was taken from buyers in cash or by transfer to a card. Buyers were found on the Internet - on "left-wing" sites or in Telegram.

"Cosmic profit" from the sale of slimming products

The benefit from the illegal trade of "Ozempik" - in the "cosmic" markup on it, said the investigator.

- It's hard to say how many packages they managed to sell since 2021, but it's definitely millions of rubles," she said.

According to her, the possession of potentially substandard drugs does not constitute a crime, one can be held criminally liable only for their sale. Therefore, the supplier of the drug managed to avoid punishment, while the owner of the pharmacy and the pharmacist had to answer for everything.

- Here there must be a clearly established fact of sale. If there is not, there is no criminal case," said the investigator.

During the search in the pharmacy and at the supplier, operatives seized several dozen packages of "Ozempika", as well as "Trulicity" American manufacturer Eli Lilly and "Saksenda" Novo Nordisk.

"Trulicity" is another diabetes drug that is popular along with "Ozempic". In 2022, the media wrote about the unprecedented demand for the drug, and the manufacturer assured that it was making every effort to maintain its availability and over-supply Russian consumers. In 2023, the company announced its withdrawal from the Russian market.

Another withdrawn obesity drug is Saxenda. It, like Trulicity, is not officially supplied to Russia.

- Labeling is applied only to those drugs that are officially imported into Russia. Trulicity and Saxenda, which are imported into the country unofficially, are not labeled, and therefore they are considered substandard. All the drugs seized in the pharmacy "Impact" were unlabeled, - explained the investigator.

The criminal case against the owner of the pharmacy and her illegal assistant was initiated in February 2024, accusing the defendants in the sale of substandard and unregistered drugs on the territory of the Russian Federation by a group of persons by prior conspiracy (Article 238.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Under this article, they face up to eight years in prison, and under the article on the provision of services that do not meet safety requirements (Article 238 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) - up to six years.

What are the dangers of Ozempik counterfeits?

"Ozempik" continues to be the most popular weight loss drug in the world, and in Russia it is still actively sold in the "gray" zone, told "Izvestia" the head of the Center for the protection of right holders at the international association "Antikontrafakt" Alexander Nosenko.

- An incredible amount of counterfeit Ozempik is now circulating around the world, mostly with text on the packaging in Arabic and Turkish. In Germany, strict measures were taken to prevent secondary sales of the drug by patients who received it under the benefit, - said the expert. - And American users of the drug have reported the first cases of blindness allegedly caused by taking Ozempik.

All this makes the "gray" trade not at all safe. Drugs that came to Russia from Kazakhstan or Turkey have no quality documents, they have not been checked for authenticity, said Alexander Nosenko.

- Therefore, no one can tell you whether you are buying a fake or an original," he said. - In my opinion, consumers are very careless about their health, buying drugs in pharmacies without documents.

One of the buyers of "gray" "Ozempik" on condition of anonymity told "Izvestia" that after several injections of the drug he began to have epilepsy.

- I took Ozempik against the background of obesity and I attribute the seizure to it. I had no epilepsy before," said Ivan T.

As Natalia Balashova, associate professor of the clinical laboratory diagnostics department of the Faculty of Advanced Training of the Vladimirsky Moscow Medical Institute, told Izvestia, in her practice there were no cases of epilepsy when taking "Ozempik". Among the possible side effects of the medication are nausea, pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas), thyroid cancer and blindness.

- For example, a February 2023 study published in the journal Diabetes Care found that taking semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic. - Ed.) for one to three years may increase the risk of all types of thyroid cancer. But this and other studies have not provided convincing evidence of a causal relationship between taking semaglutide and an increased risk of thyroid cancer, - said the expert.

The instructions for use of Ozempic in Europe and the United States inform consumers about potential side effects - pancreatitis, gallbladder disease and kidney damage. Also, according to the instruction, the active substance of the drug can cause thyroid tumors in rodents. But it is not known whether this side effect is present in people.

Alexey Kalinchev believes that there can be no serious side effects from taking original drugs imported through third countries or their generics.

- These drugs do not affect blood sugar levels. The only possible side effect of taking them is an uncomfortable feeling," the expert said.

Now, the expert recalled, in Europe and America, reports of blindness from taking "Ozempik" began to be reported. But, according to him, the undesirable phenomenon is not a mass phenomenon.

- In addition, we do not know what was the health of those who reported blindness," added Alexei Kalinchev.

He suggested that, most likely, it was not caused by the drug, but was a consequence of obesity.