A court in Shanghai has given a man a suspended prison sentence of three years and a 30,000 yuan ($4,300) fine for selling unapproved cancer drugs to patients in China, Sixth Tone’s sister publication The Paper reported Monday.
Zhai Yiping was charged with operating an illegal business that sold unauthorized drugs worth over 4.7 million yuan between February and July of last year, according to the verdict from the Shanghai Railway Transport Court dated Oct. 17. The 47-year-old was detained in July 2018 on suspicion of selling the cancer medications, including one called Opdivo, which was not approved until June of that year — meaning Zhai had sold it illicitly for several months. He had teamed up with another man, surnamed Guo, who bought the drugs from Germany, with Zhai then reselling them to patients in China at a 5% markup.
Following Zhai’s detention, more than 100 cancer patients begged authorities to release the man who had helped provide them with medicine. He was formally arrested in August of last year and released on bail three months later.
Shortages of critical drugs have led many patients in China to seek middlemen who help secure cheaper alternatives from abroad, though such medications typically aren’t approved by the country’s health authorities and are often considered “fake.” In August, Chinese policymakers enacted a revised version of the country’s Pharmaceutical Administration Law, which stopped defining drugs widely available in overseas markets as “fake” and stipulated lighter or even no punishments for the import and sale of such drugs.
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