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Drug Busters: Tracking Down Counterfeiters

Novartis deploys a global team to track down counterfeit drugs and help authorities prosecute counterfeiters.

Some degree of informal sharing takes place as well. "When we deal with informants...we'll pass on the information [to an another company] and tell them we found this lot number and this amount in Colombia, and when the raid was done," says Roman.

3. Working with authorities.

Making contacts and building relationships with police and authorities is critical to the success of Novartis's program. In Asia, Tony Chiu, who heads up security in that region, never stops cozying up to contacts. "Relationships are always important in Asia," Chiu says during a phone interview from his Hong Kong office. "It's really who you know, not what you know, that speeds things up past the red tape and bureaucracy."

"It really depends tremendously on personal relationships and an ability to shmooze with customs, law enforcement or the prosecutor's office to get them engaged," says Jackson. He cites the Colombia lab busts, and the success Roman's team has had, as examples.

"There are other big law enforcement issues in Colombiathe drug problem, the terrorist problem, the normal criminality problem. The more information and support we can give to law enforcementand we're quite happy for them to take the credit for obvious reasonsthe easier it is," he says.

Credit is the last thing Novartis worries about when fake or bad medicines are taken off the street. Jackson mentions that in the Ukraine, the SBU, the country's secret service, has reached out to Novartis to help the company deal with counterfeiting. "I'm sure they're not particularly interested in big pharma's issue; but they see some political mileage in doing a raid and having some nice pictures in the newspaper," he says. "To be honest, we're politically expedient in that sense and quite happy to piggyback in a good cause."

And if the authorities need a little more than just information, well that's fine too. "We have paid for the petrol for the police to get out of Moscow to go someplace," says Jackson.

4. Internal and external education.

"You have to begin by educating your own people," says Christian. That means teaching the business heads, marketing managers and sales reps what to look for, what's suspicious. "It's easy for them to see sales go down on a product that should be going up," he says. In some countries, scanning and tracking technologies can show when there's more product being sold than expected, a clear discrepancy. "Then you realize you have a counterfeit or diversion problem," he says. "Once they realize this can impact their sales as well as be a danger to people, then they're your ally, they're on the lookout for you."