Millions of Greek epilepsy pills have found their way to France, where they are consumed as a heroin substitute, according to Greece’s police.
A young Algerian national who bought the pills from a pharmacy in the downtown Athens neighborhood of Patissia was arrested on November 18. The arrest caps nearly two years of investigation, which began in January 2023 when French authorities alerted their Greek counterparts about the pills on sale.
The pills, marketed under the name Brieka, are easy to prescribe and cost less than a third of their counterparts in France: they sell for 20 euros per 30-pill box in Greece compared to €70 in France. Also, the pill form of the main ingredient, pregabalin, is much easier to consume than the powder or the injectable form used elsewhere.
The Algerian, Mohamed F., is said to have sent 55 shipments of pills, in large boxes, raking in €110,000 in profits.
Days after being alerted, in 2023, Greek police found their way to an international courier firm handling the shipment. They found, and impounded, 17,600 pills that had not been sent. Their destination was Amiens, a city north of Paris.
A visit to the Maroussi offices of the drugmaker helped police trace large shipments of Brieka to a storage facility in Kallithea and to a pharmacy, whose owner said Mohamed had bought at one time 560 boxes of the drug, paying in cash.
In a related action, police found 4 million pills on an aging trawler with a crew of two Egyptians in the port of Lavrio, southeast of Athens, in March 2024. They arrested the crew and a third Egyptian who had arrived at Athens International Airport and headed straight for the port. These were generic pregabalin pills made in India and destined for Algeria. There is a flourishing trade of such pills in the Maghreb countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) as well as in the Middle East. [via kathimerini]
