Giorgio Mustacchi, director of the Cancer Center, Rita Ceccherini, assistant to Dr. Mustacchi himself, and Giorgio Paladini, head of the Second Medical Division of the Ospedale Maggiore, emerged head-on from the "monster" investigation in which they had been involved in 2004 by the Veronese prosecutor Guido Papalia. The Court of Cassation acquitted them, confirming the sentence issued by the investigating judge of the Court of Verona Rita Caccamo to which the prosecutor of the city of Verona had appealed.
In short, it was not corruption, the money was regular contributions for scientific research or for the purchase of books necessary for professional updating.
Three Trieste doctors acquitted in Cassation were defended by lawyers Tiziana Benussi and Giovanni Borgna.
Prosecutor Guido Papalia had begun to investigate starting from the program that connected the laptop computers of the scientific representatives of «Glaxo» with the memories of the "data processors" of the same Italian branch of the American pharmaceutical giant. Almost three thousand people had gradually ended up in the investigation, all belonging to the healthcare world and all being investigated for corruption or comparison: doctors, managers of the Veronese pharmaceutical company and scientific informants who worked throughout Italy. A round of favors and gifts between doctors and managers of Glaxo Smith Kline: reimbursements of expenses, computers, invitations to congresses, trips and money in exchange for the commitment to freely prescribe drugs from the American multinational, according to the indictment.
Last June, the prosecutor Papalia had asked for the indictment of 142 defendants out of the almost three thousand original suspects, including Mustacchi, Paladini and Ceccherini. Nearly 2,850 people had silently walked out. It should also be added that in the preliminary hearing many hypotheses of corruption had been declassified in comparison and therefore declared extinguished due to the statute of limitations.
The costs of the proceedings for the acquitted will be borne by the public administrations of which the doctors are employees.(cb)
Il Piccolo of Trieste of 23/05/2008 ed. national p. 23
