You're reading: President signs law making medicine counterfeiting a crime

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has signed a law No. 3718-VI amending some laws of Ukraine on the prevention of medicine counterfeiting.

On Sept. 8, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, approved the document.

The law, in particular, amends the Criminal Code, adding an article entitled "Medicine Counterfeiting or the Trafficking of Counterfeit Medicine."

The article reads that the deliberate production of counterfeit medicine and also its purchase, transportation, delivery or storage with aim to sell it, or carry out intentional sales of counterfeit medicine, if such actions threaten the life or health of a person, or were committed on an especially large scale, is punished with a fine of from 1,000 to 2,000 tax-free minimum incomes of citizens, imprisonment for up to three years, or the deprivation of liberties for the same term, with the confiscation of the counterfeit medicine, raw materials and equipment for its development.

The law stipulates that the same actions committed repeatedly or in collusion with a group of people, or on an especially large scale, and the production of counterfeit medicine, entail the deprivation of liberty for three to five years with the confiscation of the counterfeit medicine, as well as the raw materials and equipment for its development.

According to law, actions that cause a person’s death, or other serious consequences, entail the deprivation of liberty for a period of ten years with the confiscation of the counterfeit medicine.

Monitoring of the quality of medicine and the conditions of its production is carried out by the central body of executive power on medicine and the territorial bodies of executive power on medicine that are subordinate to it, according to the law.