BARI – The reasons for the Farmatruffa sentence handed down by the second collegial section of the Court of Bari on 14 October 2010 after 68 hearings held over two years have been filed. In 1,200 pages, the judges of the college retraced the stages of the trial, reporting telephone and environmental interceptions, testimonies and analyzes of the defendants. One hundred and one professionals on trial, including doctors, pharmacists and scientific representatives, accused, for various reasons, of criminal association, fraud, corruption, forgery and money laundering. The first-degree sentences for 78 area managers and scientific informants of nine pharmaceutical companies and multinationals, general practitioners and pharmacists range from six months to seven years in prison.
The fraud ascertained by the National Health Service is more than 20 million euros for the reimbursement of expensive drugs, even from 400 euros per package, which then, according to the indictment, ended up in the garbage. According to the judges, the head of the alleged criminal association was 61-year-old Michele Salzo, a doctor from Conversano. «He made use of his study as a logistical base - reconstructs the judging panel - and made it available, even on holidays and at improbable times, to provide for the compilation of hundreds of recipes belonging to the recipe books issued by the National Health Service, having subject prescriptions that disregarded the therapeutic needs and intended for unsuspecting patients. He - the judges continue - also devised the system of dividing the payment of the co-payment between himself, informants and pharmacists". In the motivations we read again with reference to Salzo: «The preliminary investigation proved the reason for which he engaged in such conduct, that is an immoderate desire to acquire utility of all sorts. So he made available his activity of prescribing false recipes, his network of relationships, his studio, the country house and the tools suitable for operating, and he acted fairly towards anyone who wanted to take advantage of this organization. The only element that imposed, once the mechanism was activated, was its rate as a percentage of the price of the prescribed drugs". In this organization, the judges again point out, if Salzo was the leader and organizer, the conduct of the informants "reduces perfectly to that of promoter, since it was the informants who promoted and activated the illicit mechanism, which Salzo then took care of managing . On the other hand, the role of participants must be recognized for the pharmacists, since they did not take initiatives, but actively contributed to the proper functioning of the associative mechanism".
[In the photo the investigating PM, Ciro Angelillis]
Online Redaction – May 26, 2011
