A WHO essential medicine, a Hollywood death, a 32-country investigation – and a warning that every UK importer should read carefully.
On 8 April 2026, Jasveen Sangha – known to her clients as the “Ketamine Queen” – was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for supplying the drugs that killed actor Matthew Perry. She was the last of five defendants convicted in a case that began with a legitimate pharmaceutical product and ended in a criminal conspiracy spanning doctors, middlemen and a Hollywood stash house. The drug at the centre of it all: ketamine, a substance listed on the World Health Organisation’s Model List of Essential Medicines.
The Perry case is lurid and dramatic. The supply chain story behind it is something every UK business should find considerably more unsettling.
In March 2026, the EU Drugs Agency published a landmark report drawing on intelligence from 32 countries. Its finding: organised criminal networks are systematically exploiting the legitimate international supply chains for ketamine – bulk active ingredient sourced primarily from India and China, moving through recognised customs channels, behind standard pharmaceutical documentation – and diverting it into Europe’s illicit drug market. In 2024, European authorities seized 3.5 tonnes of ketamine. In 2016, that figure was 200 kg. Clinical demand over the same period stayed flat. The mathematics are not ambiguous.
The businesses whose logistics relationships and documentation gaps are being exploited are not, by and large, criminals. They are companies operating on the comfortable assumption that their existing compliance frameworks are sufficient.
This is a story about structural vulnerability – fragmented regulation, inconsistent international controls, and supply chains that look correct on paper because nobody has looked hard enough at the reality behind the paperwork. It is not confined to pharmaceuticals. The same pattern of exploitation appears wherever regulatory oversight is uneven and documentation requirements vary by jurisdiction. Which is to say: it appears across a very wide range of internationally traded goods.
The timing matters for UK businesses. HMRC has significantly increased its post-clearance audit activity – targeting SMEs in particular, with current focus on preferential origin claims, incorrect commodity codes, and underdeclared values. HMRC is in the process of employing 5,000 extra compliance officers. From March 2026, businesses have free access to their complete customs declaration history for the first time – which means HMRC has that same visibility. HMRC can review imports declared up to three years prior to any audit. Audits are not random. They are targeted at importers where HMRC already believes it will find something.
THE QUESTION WORTH ASKING
If HMRC – or a law enforcement agency – examined your supply chain documentation today, could you demonstrate with confidence exactly what you import, from whom, through which intermediaries, and under what end-use declarations? If the answer involves any hesitation, that hesitation is the risk.
The question worth asking is not whether your business would deliberately facilitate harm. It is whether your supply chain visibility is robust enough that you would even know if it did.
