Cuban pharmaceutical company Neuronic Mexicana benefited from Birmex laboratories, revealed the Superior Audit Office of the Federation.
14ymedio, Ángel Salinas, Mexico City, 14 March 2025 — The laboratories of Biologicals and Reactives of Mexico (Birmex) – the state company responsible for buying and distributing medicines, and controlling their quality – covered up during fiscal year 2023 the payment of 46,695,400 Mexican pesos (2,348,358 dollars) to the Cuban-Mexican pharmaceutical company Neuronic for medicines that did not meet the quality standards required by Mexico.
The payment set off alarms during a Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF) of Birmex, which showed that some drugs did not comply with the requirements and that others were not even those requested by the Institute of Health for Welfare (Insabi), an institution created by the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador that operated from 2020 to 2023.
In August 2023, Neuronic – which, with the permission of the Cuban regime, manages the salaries that Mexico pays to Cuban doctors who carry out missions in Mexico – was also favored by Birmex with a payment of 5,880,398 dollars, a source from the Health sector told 14ymedio. The reason: “contracts” for unspecified activities that took place between 2022 and 2023.
The audit, published last February, also yielded other significant figures: Birmex delivered to Neuronic, two years ago, 1,334,500 Mexican pesos (more than 67,000 dollars) as payment for 7,395 containers of 20 ampoules of aminophylline, a drug for asthma and shortness of breath, and 1,181 containers with 10 bottles of fluorouracil, which is used in cancer treatments.
According to the investigation, the lots were delivered after the agreed deadline, which carried “a penalty of 160,100 pesos that was not covered.”
By contract, Neuronic also had to deliver to Birmex 30,203 packages of pilocarpine, 158,031 of atropine, 1,900,290 of chloramphenicol, 208,864 of diclofenac, 1,130,857 of prednisolone and 192,099 of cisplatin, drugs for a whole range of treatments. To guarantee delivery, Mexico gave the Cuban-Mexican company 23,258,500 pesos (more than a million dollars).
However, the audit found that the batches of chloramphenicol, pilocarpine and atropine delivered by Cuba – where all these medicines are missing – “do not correspond to the codes and descriptions that were required by Insabi.” Nor are they listed in the National Compendium of Health Input, an index of drugs endorsed for use in Mexico. This absence caused “several rejections by health institutions,” they said.
Another irregular deposit from Birmex to Neuronic was one of more than 15 million pesos (almost 700,000 dollars) for 10 batches of medicines that did not meet the requirements of the Federal Commission for the Protection against Health Risks (Cofepris), and that were still not rejected by the state.
The Government of Mexico has favored Neuronic again and again. The National Council for Humanities, Science and Technology (Conahcyt) awarded it $7,427 three years ago for a pharmacokinetic project for early detection of Alzheimer’s in rats.
In March 2022, Conahcyt received notification about four payments for other projects of the Cuban-Mexican company. It released the money on September 27 of that same year. For the so-called “validation of the production process and preclinical tests with CNEURO-120” – the drug intended for early detection of Alzheimer’s – $3,439 was paid. Later, as part of that same project, $15,037 was delivered and, in another phase of the investigation, another $4,028.
Other anomalies were detected in the course of the audit. In fiscal year 2023, Neuronic was not the only company that, having caused losses to Birmex, was protected by its managers. In the same situation are the company Almacenaje y Distribución Avior, which paid 819,630,000 Mexican pesos (more than $41 million), and Farmacéuticos Maypo, which paid 152,533,000 pesos (almost $8 million).
Translated by Regina Anavy
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