A pharmacy owner has been sentenced to preventive arrest measures in the wake of a Judiciary Police’s (PJ) ‘mega operation’ to combat fraud in the National Health Service (SNS). Of eleven individuals arrested under the operation, the business owner was the only one to remain in custody.

PJ said that actions were carried out in doctor’s offices, health establishments, businesses and homes, enforcing both arrest and search warrants in relation to ‘crimes of corruption, qualified fraud, document forging and criminal association’.

The SNS was being defrauded mainly, but not exclusively, through unlawful prescriptions, which made the service liable to pay in full for drugs and services for which patients were not entitled.

Further investigations will now follow in order to determine the full scope of the damage inflicted upon the SNS.