An international investigation reveals that in Europe hundreds of white coats, having lost their license in one country due to abuse, negligence and even violence, continue to practice in other countries. And not much can be done to stop them, not even our own ones…
Have you ever thought that the doctor who visits you, the one to whom you entrust your health, could have been struck off the register in another country and still continue to practice freely in the hospital? It is not science fiction, but a reality documented by an international investigation which has exposed a system of controls so fragile as to allow professionals who have been struck off for abuse, negligence or violence to cross a border and resume their careers as if nothing had happened.
The result is disturbing: over one hundred confirmed cases of doctors excluded from licensing the profession but regularly active in other countries. Some operate on patients unaware of the convictions. The flaw arises from an opaque system: in many European countries disciplinary measures are neither public nor shared. Only the United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway guarantee transparency; elsewhere the authorities communicate incomplete data or deny it. Thus, a doctor disbarred in one state can easily present himself in another and obtain a new license. European rules require that sanctions be communicated via the IMI (Internal Market Information System) platform, but the exchange of data is irregular: from 2016 to 2025, ten states sent less than a dozen notifications, while Malta, Greece, Estonia and Liechtenstein sent none.
The investigation, drawn up after a joint work by 50 newspapers from 45 countries and coordinated by the Occrp network together with the Times of London and the Norwegian VG, put 90 journalists to work who analyzed over two and a half million documents – disciplinary documents, registers, sentences… – creating a unique database. And a worrying regulatory void has emerged: between slow bureaucracies and non-existent controls, just crossing a border is enough to erase your past.
In Italy, according to the report, at least ten white coats dismissed by the professional orders of other countries continue to practice undisturbed, in a context where hundreds of local healthcare professionals have already been excluded but continue to circumvent the rules themselves and operate with impunity, with the risk of prescribing drugs and administering treatments that are at least unsuitable.
This was confirmed by the National Federation of Medical Associations (Fnomceo). The reason? A structural flaw in the disciplinary system which suspends the effectiveness of sanctions until the end of the appeals. The Central Commission for healthcare professionals (CCEPS), responsible for reviewing the decisions of the provincial orders, is today practically paralyzed: over 900 healthcare workers – among whose ranks there are at least 64 disbarred doctors, but other sources indicate at least 100 – are awaiting trial. Until the Commission decides, the sanctions remain suspended, and the doctors involved can continue to work without restrictions.
A condition which, as Fnomceo denounced, “nullifies the sanctioning action” and undermines citizens’ trust. In many cases the procedures remain at a standstill for years, transforming the radiation into a purely symbolic act. Yet this is the most severe measure provided for by the code of ethics, which – as far as our country is concerned – should definitively exclude them from practicing the profession.
The regulatory void is large: Italian law does not provide for the immediate execution of disciplinary sanctions, not even in the most serious cases. Thus, a doctor who has lapsed can continue to sign reports or operate in public hospitals until the Cceps pronounces it. The risk is twofold: on the one hand the loss of credibility of the control system, on the other the safety of patients.
The Ministry of Health has recognized the criticality and is evaluating a reform of the Cceps to introduce certain times in disciplinary proceedings. But as long as the system remains like this, the numbers are destined to grow: another 150 cases of suspension are pending, and new reports arrive every month from the provincial orders.
Patient associations are calling for urgent action. “We cannot talk about the protection of public health if those who have been struck off continue to practice undisturbed,” says Tonino Aceti of the Patient Rights Tribunal. «We need a national control network and a European database of professional sanctions. Otherwise we will continue to chase cases instead of preventing them.”
Returning to the international round of dismissed doctors, the most disturbing case uncovered by the team of reporters to date is that of Dr. Iuliu Stan, currently on duty in the emergency room in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Until a few years ago he worked in the United Kingdom as a resident in orthopedics and traumatology at the Royal Cornwall Hospital, in the south-west of England. In 2019, a then twenty-year-old patient turned to him after an attack: fractured shoulder, bloody finger. He says that Stan, called to administer a painkiller, told him that the drug had to be applied rectally by him, manually. “I asked him if there wasn’t another option,” he recalls today. «He replied: “No, that’s how it’s done”. He was a doctor, and I trusted him. But afterwards I felt violated, full of shame.”
That boy did not know that he was one of the many victims of a doctor who, according to the British disciplinary tribunal, had systematically abused men and even minors during the five years he spent in Cornwall, between 2015 and 2020. After an in-depth investigation, the disciplinary panel ordered Stan’s permanent dismissal for “serious professional misconduct”. The reasons state that the doctor subjected young patients to “invasive and useless procedures, motivated solely by his own sexual pleasure”. In total he would have manually administered drugs rectally to young males 277 times, and only once to a female. Radiation was judged “the only way to protect citizens.”
Yet despite it all, Stan continues to exercise. After his suspension in England, he returned to Romania in 2021, where he regained his license and today works regularly in a public hospital. His is just one of the cases that emerged from the shocking investigation conducted by the Occrp journalistic consortium.
In Romania, when questioned by journalists, Dr. Stan rejected all accusations, claiming that he had always acted “in the interests of patients”. He added that in England “no one has ever complained”. The British General Medical Council confirmed that it had notified the Bucharest authorities of the ban in March 2024, but the president of the Cluj-Napoca Medical Association declared that the decision “is not relevant in Romania, because after Brexit the United Kingdom is not part of the European Union”. In July 2024 the young man who reported it received a letter from the Royal Cornwall Hospital with an official apology. “After that abuse I couldn’t sleep anymore,” he says. “Knowing that he continues to practice is disgusting.”
The Stan case is certainly not isolated. In 2023, the Swiss doctor Bernhard Scheja was struck off for abusing an eighteen-year-old patient visited for a cold: he forced her to undress and subjected her to a vaginal examination without gloves or explanations. Sentenced to 22 months in prison, a suspended sentence, Scheja returned to Germany, where he now works in a clinic in Düsseldorf. The German authorities, unaware of the unfortunate situation, opened an investigation only after the journalists’ report.
Similar story for Dr. Simon Moskofian, struck off in Sweden in 2021 for “serious incompetence” after administering the wrong drugs to dozens of patients, one of whom risked his life. Also expelled from Norway, today he is a doctor in a clinic in Larnaca, Cyprus.
And again, the psychiatrist Ljudmil Kljusev, sentenced in the United States to almost two years in prison for prescribing drugs in exchange for money: after his expulsion in 2018, he returned to North Macedonia where he reopened a private practice.
