‘I thought tablets were legitimate’ – accused pharmacist Hafiz Noorullah

Nov 20 2009 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

A HUDDERSFIELD businessman accused of storing two million stolen pills in his stockroom told a court he thought they were from a legitimate source.

Hafiz Noorullah, 43, kept £1.7m worth of heart-disease, breast cancer and Parkinson’s medication in his warehouse as part of an illegal trafficking operation, it is claimed.

Noorullah, of Pateley Crescent, Fartown, denies handling stolen goods on or before November 14, 2007 and breaching a wholesale medicines licence on the same dates.

Prosecutors at his trial at London’s Southwark Crown Court say the haul had vanished from a secure depot two years earlier before resurfacing for sale on the internet.

When a firm of private detectives investigated the disappearance their inquiries led them to Noorullah’s premises in Meltham.

The alleged mastermind of the operation, 52-year-old Mahmood Aziz, is on the run after skipping bail.

But Noorullah told a jury yesterday that he had no idea Aziz was anything other than a legitimate trader.

He said Aziz had approached him with a potential business opportunity to export the pills and he had agreed to help him store them as he had properly licensed premises.

Noorullah told the court he had worked as a pharmacist after graduating from Portsmouth University in 1988 until he was struck off the register 10 years later.

He said he then concentrated on a number of business ventures in his native Huddersfield as well as obtaining a Masters degree in information systems.

The court heard he owns a travel agent called Travel Express and a mobile phone warehouse, Click On Mobile, in Huddersfield, as well as a restaurant in Dewsbury – and was planning to open another in Huddersfield.

Noorullah told the court that in 2005 he set up a new venture called Ahz Pharmaceuticals, aiming to become a wholesale medicines trader, and managed to obtain a licence from the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to import and export medicines within the EEC.

He said: “Pharmacy is my first career and I had been out of it for a period of time, but it was something I had always wanted to continue with.’’

It was at this stage that he started to rent storage facilities in Station Street, Meltham.