Nabeil Nasr, registration number 2059891, and Mandip Kaur Sidhu, registration number 2052343, have both been removed from the register after being convicted of supplying Class C drugs, General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) hearing documents have revealed.
In separate remote hearings last month, the fitness-to-practise (FtP) committee heard that the pharmacists were convicted at Southwark Crown Court in November 2020 and both received 24-month suspended prison sentences.
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In a hearing held on February 17-18, the council learned that Nasr pleaded guilty to the supply of more than 28 million tablets of Class C drugs between 2013 and 2015.
Sidhu’s hearing was held a day later on February 19-20, where the committee heard that she had also pleaded guilty to the supply of almost 27 million tablets of Class C drugs, including diazepam and zolpidem.
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Sidhu was also previously found guilty of forging “an invoice purporting to sell the Class C drugs to a firm outside of the European Economic Area”, which involved “an attempt to deceive” a Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) inspector, the document said.
Along with their suspended sentence, both pharmacists were ordered to complete “200 hours unpaid work” with Nasr ordered to pay over £600,000 and Sidhu over £720,000.
“Criminal enterprise”
For Nasr, the regulator accepted “limited mitigating factors of this case in that [he] had co-operated with the police investigation when the criminal enterprise had been uncovered and pleaded guilty at the first available opportunity”.
And for Sidhu, the committee acknowledged that she expressed “some remorse”.
But in both cases, it stressed that the registrants were involved in the supply of “controlled drugs on a large scale” for “financial gain”.
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In May, Nasr was sentenced for two counts of “unlawfully” supplying controlled Class C drugs over two years including more than 24.2 million diazepam tablets and over 3.9 million zopiclone tablets, the document said.
He was also sentenced for two counts of “distributing a medicinal product by way of wholesale dealing otherwise than in accordance with a wholesale dealers’ licence”, it added.
Between May 2013 and February 2015, Nasr distributed “1,456 tablets of diazepam” and “616 tablets of zopiclone” to private healthcare company Pall Mall Medical Limited, it said.
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The regulator said that while Nasr had “demonstrated some level of insight” by co-operating with the police and pleading guilty, it “considered that his level of insight was limited”.
He “provided no evidence to demonstrate an understanding of the impact his actions had on patient safety, professional standards or public protection”, the committee found, adding that he had “attempted to minimise his role in the criminal enterprise [and] sought to deflect blame onto his employees”.
“Abhorrent” actions
The committee also found that Nasr “[had] not substantially engaged” with the hearing, submitting neither “evidence nor statement”.
He has “breached one of the fundamental principles of the profession” and brought the sector “into disrepute”, it said.
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It determined that Nasr’s conviction “related to very serious criminal offences and had clear implications in terms of the wider public interest in maintaining public confidence in the profession”.
And it stressed that “other practitioners would consider that [Nasr’s] actions were abhorrent and would attract the highest public opprobrium”.
“Dishonest mistake”
In Sidhu’s case, the hearing document set out that she and another pharmacist were alleged to have “supplied various controlled drugs at wholesale levels to a pharmacist without the requisite licences” between 2014 and 2017.
She was arrested in July 2017 and later pleaded guilty to supplying over 22.4 million tablets of diazepam, 63,420 of zolpidem and more than 4.2 million doses of zopiclone in November 2020.
She also pleaded guilty to forgery relating to “the falsification of an invoice during the investigation”.
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According to hearing documents, Sidhu told the committee she was “unaware that she had required a licence for controlled drugs” at the time of the offences.
“When audits had taken place for her pharmacy online business in or around 2014...she had not been told to apply for a controlled drugs licence from the Home Office,” she told the council.
And in regard to the forged invoice, she argued that “her only error...had been the reference on the document to an incorrect address”, describing it as a “dishonest mistake”.
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The regulator accepted that Sidhu “took full responsibility for her actions”.
But it found that she had “[abused] her position of trust”, stressing that the convictions “demonstrated behaviour that had breached fundamental tenets of the profession, namely that pharmacists should be trustworthy and act openly with integrity”.
Register removal
In Sidhu’s case, the committee concluded that her “underlying conduct and convictions [are] fundamentally incompatible with continued registration”.
It “considered that removal from the register is the only sanction that would protect patients, mark the seriousness of the conviction [and] maintain public confidence in the profession, the regulator and the regulatory process”, the document said.
Read the determination in full here.
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Meanwhile in Nasr’s case, the committee similarly concluded that “the matter before it was so serious that a suspension order, even for the maximum duration, would not be sufficient to maintain and declare proper standards of conduct and behaviour”.
It concluded that “this was such a serious departure from the standard of behaviour expected from a pharmacist that only removal of his registration would be sufficient to maintain and declare proper standards of conduct”.
Read the determination in full here.