Tuesday February 18, 2025
A man holds a box of medicine during a police operation in Hargeisa, Somaliland, where authorities arrested four Yemeni nationals accused of repackaging expired drugs with falsified expiration dates. The suspects allegedly planned to distribute the counterfeit medicine in local markets, raising public health concerns. (Credit: MMTV)
Hargeisa (HOL) — Somaliland police have arrested four Yemeni nationals accused of repackaging expired medicine with falsified expiration dates, allegedly in a bid to resell the drugs in local markets, authorities said Monday.
The men were detained during a raid in Hargeisa, where they were found repacking expired pharmaceuticals into cartons imported from China, according to police. Officials say the suspects had erased original expiration labels and replaced them with fraudulent dates, raising serious public health concerns.
“We caught these individuals in the act of rebranding expired medicine to deceive consumers,” said Col. Ahmed Saeed, Hargeisa’s eastern district police commander. “This is a dangerous practice that could have harmed countless people.”
Authorities said the investigation began when they learned that empty medicine cartons had arrived at Hargeisa’s airport two days before the raid. These boxes, which allegedly originated from China, had pre-printed expiration labels designed to mislead consumers into believing the drugs were new.
“We had been monitoring these cartons,” said Osman Adan, district commissioner of Gacan Libaax. “They were intended to repackage expired drugs collected from local pharmacies and put back on the market as if they were fresh.”
Police seized five cartons of the expired drugs, along with computers and fake certificates allegedly used in the scheme.
Ahmed Mohamed Adad, governor of the Maroodi-Jeex region, said the men had invested approximately $9,000 in the counterfeit operation.
“They planned to buy expired drugs from pharmacies, erase the dates, and repackage them into these imported cartons before selling them as if they were safe for consumption,” Adad said. “This is fraud and a serious public health hazard.”
Authorities have warned that substandard and counterfeit medicines have increasingly found their way into Somaliland’s markets, with officials struggling to regulate the quality of pharmaceuticals entering the country.
The four suspects remain in custody and will be presented in court once the investigation is complete, police said.
In recent years, Somaliland and the wider region have faced growing concerns over the influx of unregulated medicine, with some drugs linked to adverse health effects. The government has vowed to crack down on counterfeit pharmaceuticals, but weak enforcement mechanisms and porous borders have made regulation challenging.
- With files from the BBC Somali Service