Head of supplement company jailed for hormone sale.

Fourteen defendants have been condemned by The Correctional Court of Antwerp for charges related to the sale, trade, and use of illegal hormone treatments. According to Nieuwsblad Alex V, age 48, was head defendant. He hails from Oosterhout in the Netherlands and has been met with a two-year prison sentence. In addition, the court seized all of his illegally earned funds, summing around 58,500 euros, along with a fine of 18,000.

One positive doping test at an athletic event in Zwijndrecht sparked the investigation in 2015. Investigators tracked the substance to a group of bodybuilders called called ‘SuppTrade Eagles.’ The group is sponsored by Alex’s company SuppTrade, which provides dietary supplements and online coaching. The prosecutors claimed these services were merely a front for the firm’s anabolic trade and said that The Eagles were recruited by Alex as dealers.

In early 2016, law enforcement officers stumbled on a cellar in Antwerp belonging to Alex that was full of hormonal products, totaling an estimated value of 100,000 euro. This gave police all the evidence they needed to raid The Eagles’s houses, and most searches turned up more banned substances.

In court, Alex explained that every months he received a shipment from a lab in Poland for which he paid 15,000 euros. But Alex claimed he sold the products to around 30 customers locally and denied that his company SuppTrade was a front.

Eventually Alex received his relatively severe sentence. Only three of his co-defendants received prison sentences, the maximum of which was one year. Most were met with community service, modest fines, or probation charges. Some also had funds gleaned from illegal trade (totalled at 5,775 euros) confiscated by the court.

This bust represents the increase in European prosecution of anabolics that has taken it’s cues from America over the past decade. Although repercussions have been much more severe in American criminal and athletic cases, Europeans are starting to understand the issues accompanying aggressive prosecution of steroids.

For more news and updates, follow Generation Iron on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.