A "charming, clever and charismatic" fraudster, who masterminded a £4.7m fake-medicine scandal - Europe's biggest-ever - was jailed for eight years today.
Chartered accountant Peter Gillespie, 65, (pictured with his QC Daniel Janner) of Carey Close, Windsor, Berkshire imported fake Chinese-manufactured drugs for life-threatening conditions with 100,000 doses ending up in patients hands.
"They were high-value drugs that were in big demand for serious illnesses," Croydon Crown Court Judge Stephen Waller told the defendant. "They were manufactured at a factory in China and imported via Singapore and Brussels.
"They were very good counterfeits, the packaging looked just like the real thing and you knew they would go through quickly and be consumed with little trace."
The charges relate to 'Casodex', used to treat advanced prostate cancer, 'Plavix', a drug prescribed to prevent blood clots and prevent heart attacks for angina patients and 'Zyprexa' a anti-psychotic drug prescribed to schizophrenic and bipolar patients.
Medicine watchdogs ordered a Class One recall of all suspected drugs - taken by heart and cancer patients and the mentally ill - resulting in shelves cleared in pharmacies all over the country and half of the 73,000 fake packs recalled.
Bankrupt Gillespie ignored a company director ban and ran Basingstoke-based Consolidated Medical Supplies (CMS) where the drugs were repackaged for the UK market and delivered to unsuspecting wholesalers.
"You are a charming, clever and charismatic man, the leader all the way," Judge Waller told Gillespie. "But you have always dealt on the edge of legality.
"Despite being a disqualified company director you set up and ran CMS and because of your bad reputation you were unable to trade honestly and resorted to the importation of counterfeit drugs."
Despite his bankruptcy Gillespie continued to live a lavish lifestyle, driving Bentley's, Ferrari's and top-of-the-range Mercedes owned by his Luxembourg-based company.
Square Mile News had the only reporter in court and saw his visibly relieved four co-defendants cleared of all charges.
They are: his accountant brother Ian Gillespie, 58, of The Green, Marsh Baldon, Oxford; Ex-Kemco boss Richard Kemp, 61, of School Lane, Y Waen, Flint Mountain, Clwyd; salesman Ian Harding, 58, of Lower Westwood, Bradford-on-Avon and company director James Quinn, 69, of Gillespie House, Holloway Drive, Virginia Water, Surrey.
Gillespie was convicted after a four-month trial that between January 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007, he conspired together and with others to defraud pharmaceutical wholesalers, pharmacists, the public and holders of Intellectual Property Rights in pharmaceuticals by dishonestly distributing for gain counterfeit medicines.
He was also convicted on two counts of selling or supplying the three drugs without authorisation and selling or supplying counterfeit goods, namely the three medicines, between January 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007.
Gillespie was additionally found guilty of one count of breaching a company director disqualification order between July, 2005 and June, 2007, following his bankruptcy.
The drugs were manufactured by the notorious Chinese pharmaceutical counterfeiter Lu Xu aka Kevin Xu, currently serving a six-and-a-half year prison sentence for a similar scam in the United States.
"For several months you were highly successful and relied on the trust of those in this field," Judge Waller told Gillespie, who showed no emotion after being left in the glass-enclosed dock alone.
"Counterfeits are very rare in the UK market so traders were not on the look out for counterfeits and it was one person's sharp eye that led to a class one recall."
Gillespie was also disqualified from being a company director for twelve years.
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