A French pharmacist was convicted of “deception …

Servier, the French pharmaceutical company, was sentenced on Monday by justice for “aggravated deception” and “homicides and involuntary injuries” following the scandal of the Mediator, a drug that could be linked to hundreds of deaths in France.

This drug was originally marketed for people with diabetes. However, as its properties lead to reduced appetite, it ended up being prescribed for weight loss as well. The drug had been on the market for 33 years and reached the hands of five million people in France (1976-2009). The Mediator could be responsible in the long term for 2,100 dead, according to a judicial review.

“Despite the knowledge that they had existing risks for many years (…) they never took the measures that were imposed and thus deceived “the consumers who took this drug, declared the president of the Paris Criminal Court, Sylvie Daunis, with reference to the pharmaceutical company, according to local media.

In fact, this product was also used in countries like Spain or Italy, where it had ceased to be sold much earlier, in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

Servier was sentenced to pay a fine of 2.7 million euros, even if it was acquitted of the charge of “fraud”. Jean-Philippe Seta, director of the pharmaceutical group and ex-right hand of magnate Jacques Servier, who died in 2014, He was sentenced to four years in prison.

The prosecution had asked for five years of unconditional prison and a fine of 200,000 euros. For its part, the ANational Medicines Safety Agency, which “has seriously failed in its health police mission”, was fined 303,000 euros, above what is requested by the prosecution (200,000 euros).

The 6,500 complainants had asked for an “exemplary” sanction in this health scandal which erupted more than a decade ago and considered to be one of the most important in the history of France.

According to the indictment, the company deliberately withheld the properties of the drug to reduce hunger and its dangerous side effects, including: severe heart valve damage and pulmonary arterial hypertension, a rare and fatal pathology. Judge Sylvie Daunis underlined the “extreme gravity” of the deception, of “considerable and unprecedented scope” and of which “thousands of patients were victims”.

These events “weakened confidence in the health system”, according to the president of the court. Servier denied during the trial that he had “a deliberate will to deceive”.

According to one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Jean-Christophe Coubris, the financial penalty is very low. The fines imposed are “ridiculous compared to the annual turnover of the Servier group of around 4.7 billion euros,” he said.

In total, they had claimed 1,000 million euros in damages, including nearly half for Social Security, which covered 65% of the Mediator’s costs.