Interpol fights fake drugs in Asia

LIMA, Peru, Thursday (Reuters) - Fake drugs for malaria, tuberculosis and HIV have emerged as one of the world’s major counterfeiting problems and international police body Interpol has launched an operation in Southeast Asia to crack down on the problem, a senior official said.

Operation Jupiter, which is being run in conjunction with the World Health Organization and drug companies, began in seven countries in Southeast Asia last month and should end in another three months, John Newton, manager of Interpol’s Intellectual Property Crime Program, told Reuters.

“We really see our priority should be dealing with counterfeit pharmaceuticals which are being manufactured and distributed on an industrialized scale,” Newton said on the sidelines of a conference of police chiefs from the Americas.

It is the first time the 182-member police body has tackled the problem, seen as the latest moneymaker for international organized crime groups, and it did so “because there’s a gap.”

“Drug regulatory bodies generally don’t have any investigative ability and ... a lot of police forces aren’t as well equipped to focus on transnational crime. That’s the value Interpol brings to this,” Newton said.He said the operation aimed to identify the source, or sources, of counterfeit drugs.

“We’d like to eliminate them but the reality is that we’ll probably disrupt it (the counterfeit drugs trade) for a period of time,” Newton said.