Illegal business worth half a billion euros near Bucharest. A drug factory was feeding Europe’s biggest drug-trafficking network

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Huge investigation and film discovery: a drug factory near Bucharest was supplying Europe with high-risk drugs. The whole business was owned by a former vice president of the Association of Medicine Manufacturers who was arrested in the meantime. The recipe was simple: legal pills left the clandestine laboratory, which were then broken down and turned into narcotics. The value of the drugs is over half a billion euros.

By Cristina Filip on 14.03.2023, 19:59

The drug factory near Bucharest provided the raw material for the largest methamphetamine trafficking network in Europe. Practically, the factory in Voluntari produced medicamans that contained substances also used for the manufacture of drugs, such as ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. According to the prosecutors, the group distributed more than 168 million tablets containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. We are talking about 6 or 7 tons from which 5 tons of banned substances would have been extracted. From Voluntari, more than 90 transports left for the Czech Republic or Spain.

How the network worked

“A Romanian company established around the 1990s was used, with as its object of activity the production of medicines. The role of the Romanian company was to purchase the precursors and incorporate them in the form of a medicine according to a formula that would allow dissolution and extraction of substances”, said Ramona Bolla, DIICOT spokesperson. 170 million tablets were transported by car to Poland. From here, another member of the network distributed them to clandestine laboratories in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. There, the tablets manufactured in Romania were dissolved and an extremely dangerous substance was extracted from them: methamphetamine. The traffickers thus removed almost 5 tons of drugs, which reached the markets of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria.

One gram of methamphetamine is sold on the black market for up to 100 euros, so the profit is estimated at half a billion euros. The factory in Romania belongs to Laurenţiu Huică, former vice-president of the Romanian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association. Cristian Iosipescu, released from prison in 2019 after a 13-year sentence for aggravated robbery, money laundering and violating the weapons regime, would have been in charge of the transport. The two were arrested. “It seems unreal to me that there will be illegal factories in Romania and in the European Union in 2023. We are talking about gross illegality to do something like that. If you are a specialist in the field, you will never do it,” said Dragoș Damian, Producers’ Association of Medicines.

During the searches, the prosecutors found 600,000 euros, 3 tons of dangerous substances and 5 million pills with ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. Another 14 members of the network, including the leader of the group, were caught in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.