Sweet and beguiling poisons
Barely a week ago, the BBC aired a documentary with a harrowing message: deadly opioids made in India have flooded Ghana’s market, creating throngs of enslaved addicts.
Chilling footage showed the Chief Executive (CEO) of a Mumbai-based pharma company, Aveo Pharmaceuticals, a man called Vinod Sharma, brazenly confessing to undercover journalists how poisonous a certain concoction he has dreamt up is to the bodies of those unfortunate enough to become addicted. All these facts were delivered deadpan amidst bouts of intense self-praise of his own ingenuity.
Vinod’s concoction, Tafrodol, is a combination of a powerful and addictive painkiller, Tapentadol, and a strong muscle relaxant, Carisoprodol. Each drug is considered risky enough that it has been placed in “controlled” categories or outrightly banned in several countries, as is the case with Carisoprodol in the European Union (EU), for instance. When combined, however, their risks accelerate through the roof.
No country in the world allows the legal sale of Tapentadol-Carisoprodol combinations as the formulation makes no sense clinically and the prospects of abuse and harm are so high as to render them literal poisons.
Ghana, the soft touch paradise
According to the Vinod, Nigeria has been cleaning its act and tightening its borders. For that reason, he advised the undercover journalists posing as drug traffickers to use light-touch Ghana where it is easier to clear the poisons from the ports for wider distribution across the West African region.
Of course, millions of these dangerous pills stay in Ghana. The BBC documentary included grim and brutal footage of the effects of what amounts to an addiction epidemic in Tamale and other parts of Ghana. Which naturally raises the question: who is facilitating the entry of these opioids into the country?
Where are the kingpins of the trade?
Only one Ghanaian company was mentioned on the video: Samospharma. And even then only briefly, in an almost offhand manner. For those of us in Ghana, though, that angle was far from a sideshow. Who is enabling Vinod and Aveo in their quest to get their wondrous poisons into every Ghanaian bloodstream? We couldn’t let the matter rest that easily.
Thus, I took to social media to elaborate on the angle based on my side-knowledge of the months-long BBC investigation and additional work I had done since then.
Central to my line of argument was the openness with which Samospharma appeared to have conducted its business. There were reams of customs data showing exports of various opioids/addictive analgesics from India to Samospharma, not just from Aveo and its affiliate, Westfin, but also PRG Pharma and others.
Open Season or hiding in plain sight?
As far as the export data was concerned, the company has not been smuggling in these items. It has been trading in the open with established firms in India and elsewhere to the tune of millions of dollars. My conclusion therefore was that it was operating with the full knowledge of the authorities.
What is more, Samospharma’s founders are highly respectable members of the pharmaceutical industry. They are, furthermore, the visionaries behind a widely acclaimed digital platform, DrugNet, designed to ensure the safe delivery of high-quality medicines and to prevent the trade in substandard pharmaceutical products.
One or more of the company’s principals has even served on powerful advisory boards overseeing the digitalisation of Ghana’s pharmacy environment, under the aegis of the lead regulator, the Pharmacy Council, itself. I myself have read about some of these exploits with much admiration. The data pointing to their involvement simply didn’t add up.
Murkiness is the way
As a longtime governance analyst with a soft spot for Ghanaian policy matters, I have become used to murkiness.
Nothing ever seems resolvable to the satisfaction of anyone, not even the mainstream elite commentariat. Everything is debatable and decked out in shades of grey. I have hence come to always expect massive pushback no matter how clear and unimpeachable the evidence I use in my work.
All my experience notwithstanding, I have been quite perplexed about the happenings in the aftermath of my social media post.
A few people reached me to let me know that Samospharma’s principals are unhappy to have been mentioned at all. Some touched base on behalf of government-related entities. All understandable, I thought.
Threats & Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP)
But then on Monday, the 24th of February, I received a strongly worded email and a copy of a public statement issued by Samospharma that rattled me a bit.
Apart from the statement categorically denying everything said about them in the BBC documentary, one of the co-founders, Dr. Otuo-Serebour, also described my “commentary on Samospharma and DrugNet on X and LinkedIn” as “grossly misleading”. I was asked to immediately take down the posts under the implied threat of a lawsuit.
This habit of private companies threatening analysts and journalists with lawsuits to prevent public interest commentary has become rampant in Ghana nowadays but I found it odd that Samospharma would resort to such a tactic given the nature of the subject. Engagement around the facts without the threats would have been far more prudent in my view. Anyway.
Of categorical denials & ardent confusion
Given the strident tone of the statement and the emphatic nature of the denials, I reproduce the full statement below:
In subsequent press engagement, Samospharma also denied any relationship whatsoever with Aveo, Westfin or PRG.
Now, my bafflement had peaked! Essentially, what Samospharma was saying was that all the customs data the BBC and analysts like myself had relied upon from the India-export side was either fabricated by the Indian authorities or the product of an elaborate corporate heist in which its identity had been hijacked by persons unknown to conduct fraudulent trades in opioids. I was gobsmacked.
Enter the Authorities
As if that wasn’t enough head-spinning to last a week, the Ghanaian Food & Drugs Authority (FDA) soon thereafter issued a statement contradicting parts of Samospharma’s story. It turns out Samospharma had indeed explicitly communicated business relationships with Aveo and Westfin to the FDA. Only that Aveo and Westfin had been presented as middle-men between certain manufacturers and Samospharma and indeed for drugs other than opioids. Totally perplexing.
At any rate, some editors were livid. Why had Samospharma denied any knowledge of or relationship with Aveo and Westfin, the two companies in the eye of the storm following the BBC documentary, when the regulatory data is so ambiguous? Could it be that the principals are not even the primary decision-makers here? Are there some powerful forces in the background?
Probing further to sound the depths
I had to probe further. Let’s start with what is totally unambiguous.
The FDA confirmed that the drugs concerned – tafrodol, tapentadol, and carisoprodol, as well as their various combinations – are not registered in Ghana and therefore that any importation or trade in them is totally illegal. Full stop.
They also confirmed that Samospharma does import products from Aveo and Westfin. However, those products are not opioids, and they are not made by Aveo or Westfin. Aveo is simply just a conduit. They did not discuss PRG or other companies found in Indian export data as linked to the opioid trade in Ghana.
According to the FDA, the products in question are:
- Timonidin Eye Drops – made by Indiana Ophthalmics in Gujarat and exported to Samospharma in Ghana by Westfin International and Aveo Pharmaceuticals at different times.
- Samocef Injection (antibiotic) – made by Kilitch Drugs in Mumbai and exported to Samospharma in Ghana, also by Westfin.
- Prolatan Eye Drops – made by Indiana Ophthalmics and exported to Samospharma in Ghana by Aveo Pharmaceuticals.
In short, Aveo is some kind of distributor for Timonidin, Prolatan, and Samocef. In that capacity, it has supposedly been intermediating between the manufacturers in India and Samospharma in Ghana.
A simple but disastrous misapprehension by the BBC?
Could all this be explained away as the overzealous action of a local company trying to distance itself from foreign companies it had done legitimate business with in the past because they have unfortunately now been caught up in a scandal?
That would have been a nice way to tie everything up, heave a sigh of relief, and then focus on tightening our borders.
Except that it doesn’t still explain how exactly the millions of pills got to places like Tamale. Who is bringing them into Ghana from Aveo, PRG, Westfin, and the others? Moreover, the Samospharma situation is somewhat more complex than that.
The confusion deepens
Let us look a bit more closely at the three drugs mentioned by the FDA as being imported into Ghana by Samospharma through Aveo.
Samocef is a brand owned by Samospharma. Kilitch Drugs is a mere contract manufacturer, producing the medicine according to specifications developed by Samospharma. A fact that explains neatly why the product is not listed in Kilitch’s own product catalog.
Timonidin is likewise a brand of Samospharma itself. Indiana only manufactures the product on behalf of Samospharma. Hence why it does not list the product in its own catalog. India’s equivalent brand is called Timolol, a nod to “Timolol Malleate”, the same active ingredient found in Timonidin.
It is totally inconceivable that Samospharma would appoint Aveo as an intermediary to obtain medicines from its own contract manufacturers. Especially when the products concerned are actually its own bona fide brands.
In fact, Samospharma retains the right to switch manufacturers, which is probably why Kilitch’s marks are now on Timonidin even though, per FDA records, the product is manufactured by Indiana.
Prolatan is a whole other level of confusion. According to the FDA, it is made by Indiana Ophthalmics on behalf of Samospharma. The packaging however suggests that it is made by Sudarshan Pharma Industries Limited in Mumbai.
Yet, there is an active trademark for that exact same product name owned by Sentiss Pharma. Talk of bewildering!
At any rate, in all three instances, it is totally inexplicable why Samospharma would need to insert Aveo and Westfin into the middle of its transactions with contract manufacturers. Unless, of course, Aveo and Westfin were already shipping goods they have manufactured for Samospharma and were adding stocks from other companies to the same containers, as an aggregator would do, to cut costs. Yet, this more plausible explanation appears to conflict with both the FDA’s and Samospharma’s telling.
And why is it that when the BBC undercover investigators went to a DrugNet branded retail outlet owned by Samospharma, they found tafrodol on sale? Which local distributor supplied those units, then, given the lack of official import records?
Digging into Ghana Customs Data
The only way to even start tying up any of these loose ends was to look at customs data from the Ghana side closely, forensically. So, we did just that.
Whilst the deep dive into import-side customs data did shed a bit more light on some matters, in many ways it confused the picture further.
For example, whilst some records (such as, for example, Bill of Entry/BOE 40423134210) did indicate clearly that Sudarshan was the exporter of Prolatan Eye Drops to Samospharma on some occasions, there were several other BOEs that listed Aveo (e.g. BOE: 40623233912), Accelius Global (e.g. BOE: 40623241075), Kilitch (e.g. BOE: 40823371968), and PRG (e.g. BOE: 40823372206) as the exporters on various different occasions.
In short, any company could be indicated on the manifest as the exporter regardless of what is written on the pack. Furthermore, the declarations have limited regulatory meaning as the FDA’s own records are far from solid. Our contacts in India categorically dismissed the whole “intermediary” theory as propounded by the FDA. According to their findings, Indiana, Kilitch, and PRG have not appointed Aveo and/or Westfin to intermediate on their behalf in any contract manufacturing business with African partners.
One had to conclude that the looseness on the import side in Ghana and in the regulatory record-keeping must be deliberate. So we switched focus back to the Indian-export side to see if we could make progress. That is when we had our first breakthrough.
The India-side bombshell
In the heat surrounding the release of the BBC documentary, the Indian authorities blocked exports underway to Ghana of Tapentadol, Carisoprodol, and their combinations. Side note: they had already imposed bans on the production and sale of these products in the wake of the documentary and initiated various legal proceedings against Aveo and other exporters.
This time around, there was no confusion, Aveo was using Mumbai Air Cargo to send shipments of the impugned drugs to Ghana. No one could claim that Aveo was merely serving as the innocuous intermediary in the trade of perfectly legitimate industries. The Ghanaian authorities cannot thus continue to hide behind any self-induced murkiness. All they needed to do is to match the paperwork for the seized cargo with the advanced information they have received to identify clearly the conduits through which these poisons are entering Ghana.
Except that, as we now know from the statements they have made, they didn’t and don’t seem to be in any hurry to. They have so far refused to do this triangulation.
Despite the FDA’s emphatic confirmation that these drugs are illegal from the outset, the National Security Agencies and the preventive units within the Customs agencies continue to pretend that they have no information to tackle the menace head on. They continue to talk in very broad and general terms about stopping the flow of opioids, the same talk we have been hearing for a decade.
A powerful force is determined to keep the opioids flowing
Everything converges upon my initial theory: the whole saga isn’t adding up because someone or group of very powerful people in Ghana, with tentacles crisscrossing politics, business, and the bureaucracy, and protected by a shield transcending political administrations, is the mastermind behind these opioid massacres.
So much so that we have had Nigeriens and other Sahelians using Ghana as an open gateway to import millions of dollars worth of these opioids. We now know that some of this money is fueling the armed insurgencies and other specie of insecurity plaguing the subcontinent.
Clearly, the murkiness has been deliberately concocted, much like tafrodol itself, to prevent any clear reckoning with facts that are as glaring as noonday.
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