The job: Drug security director

Please respect FT.com's ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cc200e5c-caab-11e0-94d0-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1VkXjAqVF

worked in the army and in the British intelligence services for 12 years, and then I wanted to do something different. When I joined the pharma industry, a decade ago, there was a shift from physical security to investigating fake medicines in-house.
More

Counterfeiting is seen as an issue of intellectual property as with fake handbags and clothes. That’s wrong. With medicines it should be a public health offence. The luxury goods industry uses lots of lawyers. But a faulty pair of jeans isn’t going to kill you; a fake medicine could. My goal is to find evidence of criminal offences and hand them on to law enforcement agencies for prosecution. We don’t just want the guy selling the medicines but also those making them, tracing back up the chain. The bad guys take advantage of existing criminal networks. We’ll use whichever laws work – the Al Capone approach.

I work on 40 to 50 cases at any time. I run a global team, since most are complex cross-border operations. I look after our investigators’ wellbeing because it’s a dangerous job. All my peers are from a similar background. They are former policemen, investigators and military people. We co-operate, socialise together and share a sense of public duty. Most of us wouldn’t do anything else.