By M.A. Egge
Following an operation monitoring fraudulent drug dealers, the Somaliland police have arrested four Yemeni nationals accused of repackaging expired medicine with falsified expiry dates in a bid to resell the drugs in local markets, authorities said on Monday.
The men were detained during a raid in Hargeisa; according to police they were found repacking expired pharmaceuticals into cartons imported from China.
Officials say the suspects had erased original expiry 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 regional 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. The boxes, which are said to have been brought from abroad, 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 Ga’an Libaah. “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.
The governor of the Maroodi-Jeeh region Mr. Ahmed Mohamed Adad, said that 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,” he posed.
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 investigations are complete, police said.
Somaliland and the wider region have, in recent times, 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.