Mungo Soggot
Brimstone Pharmaceuticals, the Cape-based company caught with stolen drugs in a police raid, was directly warned in February to be on the lookout for some of the stolen drugs seized in the investigation.
Police raided Brimstone’s warehouses last month and uncovered about R1,5-million worth of stolen drugs – including some from a consignment of “Stopayne” painkillers stolen in Johannesburg in January.
The company – which is part of Brimstone Investment Corporation, a leading listed empowerment group – immediately launched a court application to have the warrant for the raid, during which pharmaceutical stock and documents were seized, set aside.
The police have since withdrawn the warrant, after striking a deal in terms of which they will return all Brimstone’s goods by the end of the month. These include batches of drugs apparently destined for the state sector, which the police are still checking were not stolen.
Brimstone says it had no idea the goods were stolen.
The company has called for stricter controls against “unscrupulous suppliers”, and suspects it was set up by a competitor anxious to stymie its efforts to supply cheaper drugs.
The police investigation is being partly funded by Adcock Ingram, the manufacturer of Stopayne.
Adcock chief executive Phil Nortier confirmed that his company had provided portable office space and communications equipment to the police, saying he was “appalled” at the lack of resources available to the pharmaceutical theft unit.
It emerged this week that one of the trump cards in the investigation is an affidavit from a private investigator specialising in stolen drugs who says he asked Brimstone’s chief pharmacist in February to keep an eye out for batch of Stopayne stolen in January.
The pharmacist refused to comment this week.
Hours before the pharmaceutical theft unit raided Brimstone, it stormed a warehouse in Randburg belonging to a company called the Medicine Den.
Investigators found invoices showing drugs from the stolen Stopayne batch had been sold to Brimstone.
The private investigator, Dave van Heerden, says in an affidavit he contacted Brimstone Pharmaceuticals’s chief pharmacist, Gerda Gerber, after being tipped off the goods might be offered to Brimstone.
Van Heerden’s affidavit says he told Gerber the batch numbers of the stolen goods, and also faxed her a copy of a circular warning pharmacists about the stolen drugs.
Van Heerden says he was advised to contact Gerber by Norman Knight, one of the doyens of the pharmaceutical industry who currently works from the Medicine Den.
Knight is currently embroiled in litigation in which he is accused of handling stolen pharmaceutical goods.
Knight used to run a company called Medical Cash and Carry, which was bought by Premier Pharmaceuticals in 1991.
One of Knight’s top directors at Medical Cash and Carry was acquitted of dealing in stolen property. Several of Medical Cash and Carry’s directors are now running the Medicine Den.
Knight himself was not prosecuted. But after the deal with Premier was cemented, Premier probed the matter further in a forensic audit, and opened a private prosecution against Knight, in which he was also accused of stealing from the company.
Brimstone’s lawyer, Anneke Viljoen of Hofmeyr, Herbstein Ginwala & Cluver, says Brimstone’s stock control system did not register batch numbers before the raid, but that the system had since been updated to do that.
She confirmed that Van Heerden had spoken to Gerber, but says her client denies that Gerber was faxed the warning note.
Viljoen said Brimstone would consider disciplinary action against employees found to be negligent, but that such action would only be instituted after the police had completed its investigation.