Portugal's attorney general's office has confirmed that officials are conducting searches in Portugal and Switzerland as part of a corruption investigation into plasma* supplies to the country's national health service.
Magistrates and police have searched around 40 homes, business premises and the offices of the Health Ministry and the National Health Service, and two locations in Switzerland, all part of the 'máfia do sangue,' or 'blood mafia.'
The authorities suspect "a pharmaceutical company employee" (from Octapharma) and "a Portuguese government official" (Luís Cunha Ribeiro) of conspiring to set up a monopoly through fixing public tenders for plasma supplies to Portugal’s hospitals.
The investigation is covered by judicial secrecy law which forbids details on ongoing inquiries to be published, so here we go anyway:
Luís Cunha Ribeiro, the former president of the country’s national ambulance service, was arrested as part of the inquiry and long has been suspected of trousering millions in bribes paid by Octapharma in order for the company to be contracted as the sole supplier of plasma products to the national health service.
Octapharma boss, Lalanda de Castro, is said to have supplied the use of luxury apartments to Luís Cunha Ribeiro, one in Lisbon and another in Oporto, both owned by Convida, his real estate company. One of these apartmentss was purchased by Ribeiro at significantly below its market price.
Apart from Luís Cunha Ribeiro, suspected of bribery and the long-term and free use of luxury apartments, there are at least three more defendants: the former head of the Portuguese Hemophilia Association, Elsa Morgado, the lawyer Farinha Alves and the lawyer Luís Barros Figueiredo.
Supplies from Portugal’s 500,000 blood donors have not been used by Portugal's health service. Instead, Portugual's hospitals have been obliged under the contract terms to buy all plasma supplies from Octapharma.
Octapharma was in the headlines in 2015 when it fired José Sócrates from a lucrative consultancy role. The multinational pharmaceutical company terminated the €12,000 pcm contract with the former prime minister while he was detained in Evora prison as a result of enquiries into money laundering, corruption and qualified tax fraud.
Mysteriously, José Sócrates had an apartment in the same luxury block in Lisbon where Octapharma supplied the apartment for Luís Cunha Ribeiro's use.
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* Plasma is the clear, straw-coloured liquid portion of blood that remains after red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and other cellular components are removed. It is the single largest component of human blood, comprising about 55%, and contains water, salts, enzymes, antibodies and other proteins.
