They admitted their guilt and agreed to settle the sentence. For this reason, the Public Prosecutor's Office of Bari has been able to collect, in recent days, seven million one hundred and twenty thousand euros paid by nine pharmaceutical companies. The investigation into the pharmaceutical scam against the national health service marks one of its first results. Just this morning, the public prosecutor of Bari, Emilio Marzano, described in detail the developments of an investigation involving 111 defendants, 101 of whom were indicted (one negotiated the sentence and four were acquitted, two of these due to supervening death, ed).
Among the defendants are scientific informants of well-known pharmaceutical companies, but also pharmacists and general practitioners.
The trial will begin on February 26th. The vast majority of the people involved will have to answer to the charge of criminal association aimed at the fraud of corruption, forgery, money laundering and comparison. According to the prosecutor's office, the system concocted by the pharmaceutical companies was to obtain the approval of general practitioners through international travel or favors of various kinds. The goal was to have life-saving medicines prescribed, without the knowledge of the patients, the cost of which could exceed 500 euros per pack. At this point the complicity of the pharmacists came into play. The latter, in fact, detached the punches from the boxes of medicines and threw them in the trash. This made it possible to collect the money from the national health service without going through a prescription assigned to a patient, actually suffering from a pathology that required the administration of the drug.
An activity filmed by the cameras of the Nas of the carabinieri during the first investigations. The pharmaceutical companies Pfizer (1.5 million euros), Astrazeneca (900 thousand), Lusofarmaco (1.016 million), Novartis (1.010 million), Recordati (724 thousand), Bracco (718 thousand), Bristol Myers Squibb (359 thousand), Biofutura (474 thousand), Glaxosmitkline (419 thousand) negotiated the fine and paid the maximum fine.
Although it is too early to state it with certainty, it is highly probable that the investigation into the farmafraffa will end for many suspects with the statute of limitations on crimes scheduled for 2010. The times of ordinary justice are what they are and to think that a definitive sentence can be reached in a year and a half seems, at the moment, unthinkable.
February 16, 2009
by the editorial team http://www.barilive.it/news/news.aspx?idnews=12606
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