Bulgaria Ex-Minister, Husband Say No Cancer Medicine Scam

Former minister Dolores Arsenova blames the media, which, in her words, has installed wrong suggestions and have stained her name and that of her husband. Photo by BGNES

Dolores Arsenova, Bulgaria's former environment minister from the cabinet of Simeon Saxe-Coburg, and her husband have denied allegations of a fraud with medicines for cancer patients.

“The profit that I made by trading in cancer medicines is no more than 19,64%,” Arsen Arsenov, told the morning broadcast of bTV channel on Monday.

The minister and her husband have been accused of buying Docetaxel, an anti-mitotic chemotherapy medication, at a price of a bit over EUR 150 in India and and selling it at three times higher prices to Bulgaria's health ministry.

Arsenov refused to disclose the price at which the medicine was purchased in India and showed it only to the broadcast host, saying different types of expenses that he has in transporting and trading the medicine to Bulgaria cut his profit.

“It is thanks to this profit of 19,64% that we can afford to live such a wealthy life,” Arsenov said.

The investigation into Arsenov dealings, done for the first time by Trud daily three years ago, was resuscitated this week after Bulgaria's new government pledged to crack down on frauds in the tenders for medicines that the state organizes every year and bring the guilty to justice.

Teodora Zaharieva, a cancer patient, who is well known for her public initiatives in defense of cancer patients rights, claimed that the artificially inflated prices of the medicine have brought about the drastic shortage of medication for oncology diseases, which caused deterioration or death for some of the patients.

According to the accusation Arsenov's company benefited USD 980 per bottle of the life-saving medicine.

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