Thirteen people, most of them sales representatives and executives of a pharmaceutical company, have been arrested on suspicion of bribing doctors and illegally prescribing medicines.
Sources told the state-run news agency amna on Friday, that police moved in after a months-long investigation that also involved the legal tapping of the suspects’ phones.
The voluminous case file features more than 100 people, doctors and pharmacists among them, while the amount of the alleged fraud runs to hundreds of thousands of euros.
For the illegal prescriptions, the gang would use social security numbers from the doctors’ records or from relatives and friends, state ERT TV reported on Sunday.
The arrests were made in the last 24 hours in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities.
The arrested individuals were taken before a Thessaloniki prosecutor, who charged them with forming a criminal organization, fraud, false testimony, bribery and extortion of the public and private sector as well as issuing of bogus medical certificates.
The suspects, who were ordered to remain in custody, have until Wednesday to testify before an investigating magistrate.