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Covid-19 series and organized crime
Chapter 1. South Africa's challenge to protect its covid-19 vaccines from crime
Chapter 2. Mafias Stalk the Arrival of Coronavirus Vaccines in Africa
Green-black patches of mold cover the facades of buildings that were once white.
The city is a labyrinth of alleys, some paved with sea edges compacted by the centuries that have elapsed since their placement.
The air, always humid, smells of sweet spices and fish bathed in the salty water of the neighboring sea.
The cacophony of the many markets and the muezzins that call for prayer adds to an atmosphere already overflowing for the senses.
The bustle of the old city has its rhythm, even if it is unconventional and even chaotic.
Port of Mombasa (Kenya) .Picasa
We are in Mombasa, the fifth busiest port in Africa according to a report by financial advisory firm Okan and the Africa CEO Forum.
Goods destined for the entire eastern part of the continent and part of the center circulate through the main port of Kenya.
Due to its strategic position, Mombasa has been a place of conflict since at least 1300: Arabs, Persians, Portuguese and Turks have fought wars over it.
It has also traditionally served as a refuge for all kinds of evildoers.
In the 1960s it was one of the favorite haunts of the infamous mercenary
Mad
Mike Hoare
and his troop of
Wild Geese
.
More recently, Mombasa was home to one of the world's most wanted terrorism suspects: Samantha Lewthwaite.
The White Widow
, a suspected member of Al Shabab, is indicted on charges related to several terrorist attacks in East Africa, and has been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of people.
Today, the city retains its reputation as an inseparable part of the African underworld and a major entry point for drugs from the Middle East and illegal pharmaceuticals from Asia.
Over the past 12 months, the role it can play in facilitating shipments of counterfeit and non-compliant covid-19 vaccines has been increasingly featured in conversations in East African law enforcement and secret service circles. .
The price the rich will pay for not vaccinating the poor
The expected immune equity begins to be real: COVAX will distribute 337 million vaccines since March
The Covax initiative gets under way with the delivery of the first 600,000 doses of the vaccine to Ghana
Mombasa's many organized crime gangs have never been shy about seizing new opportunities, something that is certainly not in short supply.
According to a report released in September by the Enact crime initiative, Kenyan law enforcement agencies put the number of organized criminal groups operating in the country at 132.
Most are dedicated to trafficking cocaine and heroin from Asia and Latin America.
The port is currently on track to become the main gateway for vaccine supplies from India and China to landlocked East African countries such as Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, as well as South Sudan, Somalia. and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
More goods and less inspection makes it easier for criminals
Interpol East Africa analyst-researcher John-Patrick Broome calls Mombasa a "key infrastructure" for smuggling counterfeit and non-compliant drugs.
According to Broome, inspections at the port of Mombasa and other ports in the area have already been markedly reduced.
This is an unavoidable side effect of the pandemic.
The port needs to receive medicines and support from around the world so that East Africa can cope with covid-19.
"Inspection regimes have been reduced to make it easier for goods destined to be distributed throughout the area to move quickly and without complications across the border," explains the analyst.
However, this also allows criminal organizations to “facilitate the movement of illegal drugs”, most of them from Asia.
A port inspector who spoke to
Bhekisisa
on condition of anonymity confirms this.
“Now we only inspect a small part of the incoming goods.
This is because our systems are overloaded with products.
So many cargoes arrive that we have enabled trains capable of transporting two floors of containers ”.
Containers in the port of Mombasa (Kenya) .Fredrick_Omondi
“In the coming months, large shipments of vaccines will begin to arrive in Africa, including those purchased through the international procurement mechanism Covax.
Cargo planes are likely to be unable to handle those volumes, so they will be transported by ship to some of the country's many free trade zones, including Mombasa.
According to crime analysts, international crime fighting organizations and the police, these free zones are where the vaccine supply chain will be most exposed to criminals introducing fraudulent or poor quality preparations.
What is a free trade zone?
The US foundation Global Financial Integrity (GFI), which analyzes financial crime around the world, has called the FTZs “Pandora's box of dirty money” and “haven for uncontrolled crime”.
According to GFI, free trade zones, also known as free ports, are “special economic zones that benefit from tax exemptions.
Although geographically they are located within a country, in practice they are outside its borders for tax purposes ”.
The African Free Trade Zone Association reports that, in 2019, the continent was home to 189 areas of free movement of goods in 47 of its 54 countries.
Ten of them are in South Africa.
While they are often located in ports, they can also be strategic hubs located inland, as is the case with Limpopo's Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone, near the South African-Zimbabwean border.
Developing countries are the ones that most promote the existence of free zones, since they offer to attract exporting companies and foreign investment, and create jobs.
But the Global Financial Integrity report warns that “criminals see in them the perfect place to produce and transport illegal goods, since controls and checks by the authorities are often irregular or non-existent.
The authorities hardly supervise, or do not supervise at all what happens in a free trade zone, they rarely inspect the goods and the companies that operate in it tend to benefit from the few requirements to declare and be transparent ”.
Bribes to border agents after the economic crisis due to covid-19
On January 1, in the midst of a pandemic, the African Union (AU) launched the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
With 54 signatories, it is the largest trading bloc by number of members.
According to the African Center for Economic Transformation, the AfCFTA could constitute an economic conglomerate with a combined GDP of between 3.4 and four trillion dollars, and increase the internal trade of the continent by 33%.
The agreement is more than just a free trade agreement.
"It is the vehicle for the economic transformation of Africa," notes the center.
"Through its various protocols, it will facilitate the movement of people and labor, competition, investment and intellectual property."
However, a former illegal drug smuggler who is now collaborating with the police investigating crime in West Africa, warns: “I am sure the African Union has good intentions in turning the continent into a huge free trade area, but that will be a paradise for gangs that are already bringing fraudulent drugs to the continent.
It's like putting up a sign welcoming them to Africa. "
This is not to say that before the AfCFTA was put into operation there were no risks.
As intellectual property lawyers Marius Schneider and Nora Ho Tu Nam argue, Africa's plethora of free trade zones previously attracted organized crime trafficking in illegal drugs.
Schneider and Ho Tu Nam advise some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, and in May they published a report warning of the possibility that counterfeit covid vaccines were being distributed in Africa.
"In ports like Mombasa and other free trade zones, pharmaceuticals are packed and repackaged in such a way that their origin is disguised," explains Schneider.
“There is no doubt that the use of ZLCs facilitates and encourages the trade in fraudulent medicines.
If you ask me if these areas play a role in the crime surrounding covid vaccines, flat out, yes.
The reason is that, in our experience, they are not well policed and, furthermore, they are highly exposed to corruption ”.
Broome claims that since the pandemic began, organized gangs have tried to “corrupt” East African port officials into receiving shipments of fake personal protective equipment.
“The unfortunate context of covid-19 in terms of socioeconomic impact has led to a situation in which people fear for their employment.
We have seen how the gangs offered money to some people in order to gain access to the scarce resources available to inspection in ports at the moment ”.
The end of the silk road and the possible beginning of a dark journey with fake vaccines
Schneider says Djibouti, which functions as Ethiopia's port, is also a possible source of concern.
"It is at the end of the Chinese Silk Road, and is a major entry point for Chinese products into Africa," he explains.
“Therefore, it occupies a very strategic position.
It is part of one of the busiest maritime trade routes in the world, linking Asia with Africa and the Middle East ”.
In 2018, this small country in the Horn of Africa opened what will be the largest free trade area in Africa.
Its various stages of development, financed by China, have cost about $ 3.5 billion.
Various sources related to information gathering and crime prevention in East Africa express concern about Djibouti.
According to these sources, by not having an official customs registrar (an electronic registry of registered trademarks that enter a national territory), the country is perfect for organized crime to benefit from vaccine shipments.
“The Djiboutian authorities do not register the marks.
This means that they do nothing to notify the company when there is a suspicious shipment ”, admits one of the sources, who asks that his name not be mentioned.
"Of course, criminals know very well that there are entry points like this, with shortcomings that they can take advantage of."
Port of Djibouti, Ethiopia Sinny Pak (Flickr)
Bhekisisa's
attempts to
speak to the Djiboutian customs authorities were unsuccessful, but Schneider confirms that they do not make it a rule to notify companies in case of suspicion about the authenticity of the goods.
The lawyer says that he has recently made inquiries with the Djiboutian authorities.
“There is the possibility of signing a kind of memorandum of understanding with your customs service.
Then they may take care of the signer's products, ”he explains.
“But it is not something that is planned or that is automatically put into practice.
On the other hand, in some countries, such as South Africa and Mauritius, cooperation with customs to seize illegal goods works very well ”.
Last July, the report of a study carried out by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Unodc) also identified the ports of Lomé (Togo) and Cotonou (Benin) as key points for the entry of Counterfeit and substandard pharmaceuticals related to the covid-19 pandemic.
According to Mark Micallef of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Libya is currently the “epicenter” of trafficking in stolen, counterfeit and low-quality pharmaceuticals in North Africa and the Sahel region.
“Drug trafficking in general grew exponentially in Libya starting in 2011 [when the Muammar Gaddafi regime was overthrown], with new players, the development of new markets, and counterfeit prescription drugs and pharmaceuticals such as a large growing mercantile sector.
The internal market, which before the revolution was much more strictly controlled by the regime, also grew very fast ”.
Micallef observes that "in ports and in strategic border areas there are perfectly operational key nodes for the criminal business" that could function without problems as conduits to introduce counterfeit covid-19 vaccines.
Sourcing from landlocked countries puts enormous pressure on entry points
Like other customs officials
Bhekisisa
has spoken
with
in various parts of Africa, an inspector from Mombasa states that he has "strict orders" to "target shipments arriving from Asia" to try to detect possible counterfeit vaccines.
But the instructions received generate frustration and discouragement.
"Today everything comes from China," he notes.
“We don't have the capacity to inspect everything that comes from Asia.
It is impossible.
We can only check a small part, so a lot of illegal merchandise passes us by, but we can't do anything ”.
Ho Tu Nam predicts that if vaccines run into obstacles at entry points to Africa, organized crime will try to capitalize on the chaos.
"About a third of the continent is landlocked, so there are few ports [like Mombasa and Durban] to serve many countries," he says.
Six inland countries will depend on South African entry points to process and distribute large shipments of vaccines, mainly from China and India: Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
According to the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transportation, Durban is the largest and busiest shipping terminal in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the fourth largest container terminal in the Southern Hemisphere, linking “Far East, Middle East, Australasia, South America, North America and Europe.
It also functions as a transshipment hub for East Africa and the islands of the Indian Ocean ”.
Durban Beach, South Africa Michael Jansen (Flickr)
Ho Tu Nam thinks that organized crime could take advantage of the busiest points of entry to fraudulently label shipments of poor quality and counterfeit drugs as "in transit" goods.
“We have observed that many counterfeiters mark products that pass, for example, through the port of Mombasa destined for South Sudan, as destined for Rwanda.
Customs agents are so busy and focused on products marked for distribution in their own country that they do not check those labeled 'in transit'.
Once the fake-branded products hit the road, they are diverted to local markets. "
The threat of the "small pharmacist"
In East Africa, several police officers told
Bkekisisa
that they are concerned that counterfeit, irregular and stolen covid vaccines may be distributed by some of the thousands of untitled "pharmacists" in the area.
According to Interpol, they have reason to worry.
"The number of unlicensed pharmacies has increased in the area during covid-19," denounces Broome.
“An example of this is that during this period there were 56 arrests in Uganda and 1,526 establishments were closed.
In them you can sell, for example, fake antivirals from Asia ”.
The analyst denounces that the members of the organized gangs try to “franchise” illegal pharmacies throughout East Africa “to give them a greater appearance of legality”.
However, according to Micallef, both legal and illegal pharmacies constitute important channels for the flow of illicit medicines throughout North Africa, and specifically in the Maghreb countries, namely Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia.
Across the continent, single-person or family-owned businesses often operating in the suburbs or using mobile means, such as the back of a pickup truck, provide a significant source of cheaper authentic drugs to populations that, otherwise, they could not afford the treatment.
Police report that criminals often use these pharmacies as a “front” and “channel” for illegal pharmaceuticals.
Crime analyst-investigator Maurice Ogbonnaya, a former security officer in the Nigerian National Assembly, states: “Unfortunately, they are difficult to control, because they move around, and if the police start to inspect them, they close down for a season and then they reopen, or they go to another site ”.
Without punishment, there is no fear of producing fake drugs
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime admits that progress has been made over the past decade in developing frameworks for substandard and counterfeit medical products.
However, "few countries have an adequate and functioning legal and regulatory system to deal with crimes related to poor quality and counterfeit pharmaceutical products associated with covid-19."
In addition, according to Schneider, experience says that, in Africa, people caught distributing fake vaccines will not receive severe punishment.
"In many parts of the world, including Africa, fake drugs are often considered an infringement of intellectual property rights, but not a crime," he says.
Cyntia Genolet, Associate Director for Africa Engagement at the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, suspects that this is precisely the cause that could encourage organized crime to invest in counterfeit and poor-quality vaccines.
“If no [real] punishment is imposed, the person just takes the risk.
Maybe then he will spend three days in jail, pay a small fine, and then he can continue ”, he ironizes.
A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development published in 2018 identified Egypt as a continental shelf for the trafficking and production of illegal goods.
However, that same year in the country there was only one arrest for producing counterfeit drugs.
A worrying fact is that that single arrest was enough to place Egypt among the top 10 countries in number of arrests for this crime.
"That says it all about the seriousness with which not only Africa, but the whole world, have taken the problem so far," laments Schneider.
"If someone is caught selling pharmaceutical products in Comoros, for example, they will let him go with a fine and allow him to take the fraudulent products."
A millionaire raid with freedom for criminals
Andy Gray, a veteran pharmacist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, recalls what, unfortunately, is probably the most famous case of counterfeit medicine trafficking in which the perpetrators got away very well: In 2000, the police carried out a raid on a Potchefstroom factory and seized pharmaceutical products, many of them smuggled in from India, the market value of which was later estimated at R95 million, more than € 5 million.
After two years, a judge concluded that Derrick Adlam, Deon de Beer and Joham du Toit, three pharmacists from that city in the North West province, had run a mob that repackaged and distributed counterfeit, stolen and expired drugs.
All three pleaded guilty, but only to trademark law infringement.
They were given a five-year suspended sentence, and after paying a fine, they were quickly released.
Poor quality and counterfeit vaccines will have an inhibitory effect
According to Ogbonnaya, some government agencies, especially in West Africa, try to tackle trafficking in illegal pharmaceuticals, but most of the measures are taken by individual governments that focus only on local crime.
Organized crime, the analyst points out, operates on a regional, continental and global scale.
That is why what is needed is a corresponding cross-border cooperation.
“Right now, in some African countries there are raids and arrests every few months, or even years, and closures of illegal pharmacies, for example.
Then, after a few months, the criminals return to their activity ”, he laments.
“It is a very ingrained system, and it is not going to end with a few arrests here and there.
Ending it requires large-scale cooperation between the police, governments, pharmaceutical manufacturers and many other stakeholders.
And that is what is currently lacking: coordination.
Africa and the world need a single system focused on the trafficking of illegal drugs, and we do not have it ”.
In 2010, the Council of Europe drafted and adopted the Medicrime Convention (Council of Europe Convention on Counterfeiting of Medical Products and Similar Crimes Posing a Threat to Public Health), the only international legal instrument that provides the means to criminalize the counterfeiting of medical products as a threat to public health.
However, so far only 18 countries have ratified it.
Three of them are African: Benin, Burkina Faso and Guinea.
“They are the only three [countries] in Africa that actually criminalize counterfeiting drugs,” Genolet emphasizes.
However, it is hoped that others will soon ratify it.
Ruona Meyer, producer of
Sweet, Sweet Codeine
, an Emmy Award-nominated documentary about illegal drug trafficking in Nigeria, states that she would like to see an example be given to the first person, or the first group caught distributing in Africa counterfeit, stolen or non-compliant anti-covid vaccines, wherever it took place.
"It would be a great help if the police authorities extinguished the fire of the fake vaccines as soon as the first flames broke out," he says.
“These traffickers must be brought to justice and to jail as soon as possible to deter organized crime.
The processes for fake vaccines must be streamlined and must be absolutely public. "
Salim Abdul Karim, co-chair of South Africa's ministerial scientific advisory committee, warns that counterfeiting itself could cause "enormous damage" to people's confidence in the safety of preparations.
Something similar thinks Andy Gray.
The pharmacist thinks that, in South Africa, a wave of counterfeit vaccines would be enough to have "a real inhibiting effect on people's faith and confidence in both the government and the regulatory authority."
“In this country we already have parents and citizens in general who are reluctant to vaccines.
If we want to end up vaccinating 70% of the population, we cannot afford to have a third or a quarter reject the injection.
Anything that breaks confidence, be it the improper treatment of adverse effects after receiving a real vaccine or contact with a counterfeit vaccine, or that suddenly reaches unexpected places where people are vaccinated on the sidewalks, will arrive immediately. to the press, and I think that could be really harmful. "
This is the latest in a three-part series dedicated to investigating organized crime related to covid-19.
It is supported by a grant from
the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC)
.
You can read the
first
report and the
second here
.
Article
originally
published in English
in Bhekisisa
, a
South African publication specializing in health
.
You can consult the newsletter
Bhekisisa Center for Health Journalism
here
.
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