BY JEAN-FRANCOIS ROSNOBLET AND ALEXANDRIA SAGE
MARSEILLE/PARIS Tue Dec 10, 2013 8:00am EST Reuters FiDA highlight
(Reuters) - The founder of a French breast
implant company was sentenced to four years in prison on Tuesday for hiding the true nature of
the sub-standard silicone used in implants sold to 300,000 women around the
world.
Jean-Claude Mas, 74, founder and long-time chief
executive of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), was prosecuted after a worldwide
panic in 2011 when France
recommended that women with such implants should have them removed due to an abnormally high rupture rate.
Worries about the implants launched a flurry of
international lawsuits and prompted
calls for Europe to toughen controls on medical devices and fix its fractured
oversight system.
Once the third-largest global supplier of breast implants,
the company was shut in 2010 and its implants ordered off the market after
inspectors pursuing a tip-off discovered vats of industrial-grade silicone
outside the PIP factory in the southern town of La-Seyne-sur-Mer.
A Marseille criminal court also ordered Mas, who
had been pursued for aggravated fraud, to pay a 75,000-euro ($103,000) fine. His lawyer,
Yves Haddad, said he would appeal.
Four other
executives, including the chief financial officer, were sentenced to between
one-and-a-half and three years in prison, some of it suspended, and fined.
"It's a strong signal. This decision is what
victims were waiting for," said one of their lawyers, Philippe Courtois.
The president of a PIP victims group, Alexandra
Blachere, called it a "symbolic
sentence" that challenged any prejudice that there was "a
ditzy bimbo behind every pair of silicone breasts."
The two-month trial in April and May was held in
an exhibition center to accommodate the 7,400 civil plaintiffs and 300 lawyers. Jeers from the crowd
greeted Mas' appearance in the makeshift courtroom.
For less serious felonies in France,
the criminal court hands down a sentence without pronouncing a guilty or not
guilty verdict, which is implicit.
HIDDEN EVIDENCE
Mas
admitted using silicone created by trial and error that was never approved by
regulators and which cost a seventh of the price of silicone approved for use
in medical devices.
He has insisted the gel he had relied on since
the founding of the company in 1991 was non-toxic and has said women who
complain about their PIP implants are "fragile people, or people who are
doing it for the money."
A police investigation revealed a sophisticated fraud at PIP, which managed to
conceal the implants' ingredients from regulators, thereby allowing them to be
sold on international markets.
Before annual audits to the PIP factory by
private certification company TUV Rheinland, employees would clear away evidence of the cheaper gel
it used to fill implants.
For a special report on the PIP scandal, click
here:
TUV sued PIP for fraud, but a French court ruled
last month the German company had failed in its obligations of "vigilance
and caution" and ordered it to pay 3,000 euros to each of the 1,600
plaintiffs, women wearing PIP implants who had sued.
Health experts insist that no link has been
established between PIP implants and breast cancer.
Still, women around the world with PIP implants,
whether in Venezuela,
France
or Britain, have rushed to their surgeons to have them removed, fearing health
complications.
Since France recommended removal, some 14,729
women in France - nearly half of all French women with PIP implants - have
chosen this option, according to French regulators.
Regulators
say a quarter of PIP implants removed were found to be faulty, most having
ruptured.
Only one case of anaplastic large cell lymphoma,
a rare type of cancer originating in the lymphatic system, has been documented
in France from a women wearing PIP implants.
National health agencies have given differing
advice. While France and Venezuela
offered to reimburse women who have their PIP implants removed, other
countries, such as Britain, recommended that women merely have them checked.
Other legal cases related to PIP are still
pending in France, including one related to the 2010 death of a woman wearing
PIP implants. Another relates to tax fraud by Mas, his former girlfriend and
Chief Executive Claude Couty.
(Writing By Alexandria Sage; Editing by Mark John
and Ruth Pitchford)
No comments:
Post a Comment