Raids in Veles: local man suspected of selling cancer patients fake "Cuban vaccines"

The Veles Basic Public Prosecutor's Office carried out searches at several locations in the town, including the workplace of local man M.A., who is suspected of offering cancer patients unregistered "Cuban vaccines." The case covers two criminal offences: fraud and quackery.

According to prosecutors, the suspect, aiming to obtain unlawful financial gain, deceived several people by falsely offering them vaccines against cancer. The search of his workplace turned up evidence that will be forensically examined, and electronic devices were seized. The public prosecutor is questioning the victims and other people who may have knowledge of the case.

Prosecutors asked the court for precautionary measures - confiscation of his travel document and an obligation to report to the court. The decision on the measures was handed to him in a medical facility, where he is currently hospitalised.

Hope at a price of thousands of euros

The case went public a few days earlier, when it was reported that M.A. had for years been injecting dozens of cancer patients across Macedonia with an unregistered "Cuban vaccine" in their homes, charging thousands of euros. The scheme doesn't require medical knowledge, just other people's desperation: a family clutching at any straw pays without asking what's in the syringe.

If the suspicions are proven, this isn't a system error but the deliberate choice of a man who turned other people's illness into income. The institutional question comes second, but it does come: how could the sale of an unregistered substance in the homes of seriously ill people go on for years before anyone stopped it?

The prosecution and the Interior Ministry say they are still gathering evidence. The patients and their families deserve an answer to the simplest question of all: what exactly was injected into them?