A few minutes before nine o'clock, the crowd of police transporters turns into the commercial area in the northeast of Hamburg. The vehicles stopped at Albert-Schweitzer-Ring 18 in Jenfeld, dozens of riot police marched in a long line into the company's building. Six and a half hours later, the officers from this and the neighboring building will pack hundreds of boxes of evidence into a truck: contracts, billing documents, copied email boxes.
It is the largest raid ever ordered in Hamburg in a white-collar crime case. 420 police officers strike simultaneously in 47 locations on Tuesday morning. Doctors' offices are searched, five pharmacies, a hospital, several company headquarters, private houses, even bank lockers are opened. It's about bribery. The focus is on the Hamburg company ZytoService. The market leader in the production of infusions for cancer therapies is said to have systematically bribed doctors in recent years. The company did not respond to a request from ZEIT ONLINE regarding the allegations.
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It is not the first suspected corruption in the billion-dollar cancer drug market. But the case has a new dimension because, in addition to classic bribery, a new method is at stake: instead of promising doctors in secret meetings money on numbered accounts abroad, doctors are bought quite openly and at first glance legally.
With the money from international investment funds, ZytoService has bought oncologists all over Germany from their practices in the past few years and turned them into medical care centers, or MVZs for short. It is actually forbidden for pharmacists or pharmaceutical manufacturing companies such as ZytoService to participate in medical practices and thus control the demand for their own products. Medical decisions should be based on the patient's well-being, not financial interests. But the law leaves a loophole that ZytoService is said to have used for its business model.
If you want to understand how this model works, you have to look at the complicated cancer business. For months, ZEIT ONLINE and the NDR magazine Panorama have researched the company structure of ZytoService, talked to skeptical doctors and cheated pharmacists, visited financially weak hospitals and were allowed to look at infusions that cost as much as a mid-range car. This story begins more than 15 years ago. With three pharmacists who want more.
In 2002 the three Hamburg pharmacists Enno S., Thomas B. and Thomas H., then all-around 40 years old, decided to work more closely together. They think they have discovered a gap in the market. The manufacture of infusions for the treatment of cancer, as they called it, could be professionalized. Instead of in small laboratories in the pharmacy, the infusions are to be produced on a quasi-industrial scale in the large laboratory. They found ZytoService GmbH, received approval in 2006 as a pharmaceutical manufacturer and began to produce on a large scale for other pharmacies.
It is a cynical finding for all sick people, but the cancer business is gigantic - a growth market to this day. Almost every second German gets cancer at some point in his life, scientists at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin have calculated. There are 1.5 million cancer patients in Germany today, and about half a million people are diagnosed each year. That is almost twice as many as 40 years ago. And there will be more. The likelihood of developing cancer increases with age. An aging population is more likely to get cancer.
A lot of money can be earned with the infusions against cancer, the business area of ZytoService. The statutory health insurance funds currently spend seven billion euros each year on cancer medication - of which they pay 3.8 billion euros for infusions that are prepared individually for each patient in special laboratories.
When the three Hamburg pharmacists founded ZytoService at the beginning of the millennium, the total was less than a third as high. Back then, they were expanding in a growing market - also with the help of investors. In 2008 the Caption investment fund acquired a stake in ZytoService. A large laboratory is being built in Hamburg for 7.4 million euros. At the same time, the company begins lobbying. Co-owner Enno S. founds the "Federal Association of Recipe Manufacturers", whose president he is to this day. The association represents twelve members. The association is viewed with corresponding skepticism - especially by pharmacists.
It is not the first suspected corruption in the billion-dollar cancer drug market. But the case has a new dimension because, in addition to classic bribery, a new method is at stake: instead of promising doctors in secret meetings money on numbered accounts abroad, doctors are bought quite openly and at first glance legally.
With the money from international investment funds, ZytoService has bought oncologists all over Germany from their practices in the past few years and turned them into medical care centers, or MVZs for short. It is actually forbidden for pharmacists or pharmaceutical manufacturing companies such as ZytoService to participate in medical practices and thus control the demand for their own products. Medical decisions should be based on the patient's well-being, not financial interests. But the law leaves a loophole that ZytoService is said to have used for its business model.
If you want to understand how this model works, you have to look at the complicated cancer business. For months, ZEIT ONLINE and the NDR magazine Panorama have researched the company structure of ZytoService, talked to skeptical doctors and cheated pharmacists, visited financially weak hospitals and were allowed to look at infusions that cost as much as a mid-range car. This story begins more than 15 years ago. With three pharmacists who want more.
Three pharmacists recognize the cancer business
In 2002 the three Hamburg pharmacists Enno S., Thomas B. and Thomas H., then all-around 40 years old, decided to work more closely together. They think they have discovered a gap in the market. The manufacture of infusions for the treatment of cancer, as they called it, could be professionalized. Instead of in small laboratories in the pharmacy, the infusions are to be produced on a quasi-industrial scale in the large laboratory. They found ZytoService GmbH, received approval in 2006 as a pharmaceutical manufacturer and began to produce on a large scale for other pharmacies.
It is a cynical finding for all sick people, but the cancer business is gigantic - a growth market to this day. Almost every second German gets cancer at some point in his life, scientists at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin have calculated. There are 1.5 million cancer patients in Germany today, and about half a million people are diagnosed each year. That is almost twice as many as 40 years ago. And there will be more. The likelihood of developing cancer increases with age. An aging population is more likely to get cancer.
A lot of money can be earned with the infusions against cancer, the business area of ZytoService. The statutory health insurance funds currently spend seven billion euros each year on cancer medication - of which they pay 3.8 billion euros for infusions that are prepared individually for each patient in special laboratories.
When the three Hamburg pharmacists founded ZytoService at the beginning of the millennium, the total was less than a third as high. Back then, they were expanding in a growing market - also with the help of investors. In 2008 the Caption investment fund acquired a stake in ZytoService. A large laboratory is being built in Hamburg for 7.4 million euros. At the same time, the company begins lobbying. Co-owner Enno S. founds the "Federal Association of Recipe Manufacturers", whose president he is to this day. The association represents twelve members. The association is viewed with corresponding skepticism - especially by pharmacists.
