The Deputy Head of Health of Italy of Rights: "Applause for the work of the police but once again we are faced with a clear case of speculative management"
Searched the headquarters of the pharmaceutical group Menarini. On Thursday, the Nas carabinieri, the officials of the Revenue Agency and the investigators of the Guardia di Finanza notified a decree of seizure of assets issued by the investigating judge Michele Barillaro. The accusation is of fraud for illicit earnings amounting to 1 billion and 212 million euros, the result of corporate operations developed at an international level, which would have allowed the well-known pharmaceutical industry to supply the National Health Service with drugs sold at higher than due prices . The result of the investigation started in 2008 revealed that Menarini deceived for years the Ministry of Health and the drug price commission, which established the sale prices of medicines based on the fraudulently increased prices of raw materials.
“Once again in Italy there are two categories of entrepreneurs: there is the operating entrepreneur who takes care of carrying out productive projects within companies, and then there are the speculative entrepreneurs. This second type is led by industrialists whose ultimate and exclusive aim is to earn more and more every year. Recently it seems that our country is increasingly populated by managerial groups that belong to the second type of entrepreneurial class". This is the first harsh comment released by the Deputy Head of Health for Italy of Rights, Luigino Smiroldo.
“We are faced with a situation where the prerequisite is to find all possible and impossible systems to be able to increase earnings, even if doing so would lead to illegal actions. I am amazed that the people appointed to evaluate the offers received by the local health units did not realize that there was speculation behind it - continues with the careful analysis the exponent of the movement founded by Antonello De Pierro -. In Italian institutions in general, and in this specific case in the healthcare environment, there is a lack of real controls on who carries out the various supplier verification activities. Situations continuously arise in which a strong need for inspection of the controllers emerges”.
Smiroldo concludes his lively comment by adding: "Great credit must undoubtedly be given to the work of the forces of order, however this episode adds up to a long list of situations which have increasingly seen entrepreneurs with speculative management acting against the background".
November 29, 2010
The GIP Barillaro
