Vast profits and light jail sentences are two key reasons why the global trade in counterfeit medicines is attracting growing interest from organised crime groups.

Globally, sales of counterfeit drugs are expected to reach $75 billion (£38 billion) by 2010, a 92 per cent increase from 2005, according to America’s Centre for Medicines in the Public Interest. The World Health Organisation estimates that up to 10 per cent of medicines available globally are counterfeits.

In Nigeria up to 70 per cent of drugs are thought to be counterfeit or adulterated. In Russia and many of the former Soviet Republics the figure is thought to be well over 10 per cent. In the European Union counterfeit drugs constitute less than 1 per cent of the total. However, in 2005, Customs officers still seized more than half a million packets of fake medicines in 148 raids.

Yesterday European drug companies unveiled plans for new measures to stop the trade, including the launch of a pilot scheme which will use two-dimensional bar codes and tamper-resistant packaging. Electronic tags are also being considered.

GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s largest drugs companies, discovered a counterfeiting operation making fake GSK products, including antibiotics and pain relievers, at a plant in northeastern China. These were then supplied to customers in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America. But despite the scale of the operation and the huge sums involved, the ringleader was jailed for only a few months.

In Europe much of the concern over counterfeits revolves around the so-called “parallel trade” in medicines – a practice where drug wholesalers buy lower-cost pharmaceuticals in one country, for example Greece or Portugal, and then export them for sale in another EU country such as the UK, where they command a higher price. The wholesaler then pockets the difference.

Parallel trade is legal in the EU but wholesalers usually have to repackage the medicines in order to comply with regulations governing their sale in different countries, as well as the translation of the accompanying instructions into new languages.

This repackaging process represents a weak point where counterfeit drugs can be inserted into the supply chain and passed off as bona fide imports.

Critics of parallel trade, including big pharmaceutical companies whose profits are damaged by the practice, have been fighting a lengthy legal battle against it in the EU, citing the danger of counterfeits.