ROMAGNA – After years of extorting money from the National Health Service, now Italfarmaco, the pharmaceutical company called "Ricettopoli" that ended up at the center of the investigation is returning the stolen goods. The company exited the proceeding by negotiating a 20,000 euro fine and paying 301,000 euro as compensation to the civil parties who filed an action, namely the Emilia Romagna Region and the three local health authorities of Bologna, Ravenna and Rimini.
The sum, already confiscated, is already available to the civil parties who will thus be able, at least in part, to regain possession of the sums that have been illegally disbursed. "A more unique than rare event - underlines Moreno Maresi, civil party lawyer representing the Local Health Authority of Rimini - which allows the Public Health Service, affected by the affair, to be able to collect a large sum already at the end of the hearing preliminary". The investigation, called "Ricettopoli" has revealed a deception of hundreds of thousands of euros against the National Health Service set up by a scientific informant of the pharmaceutical company Italfarmaco, with the complicity of pharmacists and doctors of the Bolognese hospitals and Romagna. The scam consisted in prescribing expensive anticancer drugs to non-existent, already deceased or completely unaware people. The Ausl paid the cost of the super drug and the compliant doctors received trips, Rolexes, high-tech objects and other gifts in exchange.
On November 21, 20 doctors and pharmacists will be tried. They will all appear before the judges in collegial composition to answer, for various reasons, for criminal association and where the crime has not lapsed into the statute of limitations, for fraud and forgery. The civil parties will be represented in the courtroom by Mariano Rossetti for the Emilia Romagna region and the Ravenna Local Health Authority, Sabrina di Giampietro for the Bologna Local Health Authority and Moreno Maresi for the Rimini Local Health Authority. Italfarmaco Spa is represented by the lawyer Alberto Alessandri of the Milan Bar.
Romagna Noi – 14 May 2014
Ricettopoli, twenty indicted among doctors and pharmacists
Forgery of prescriptions made out to real, non-existent or already deceased patients - in exchange for gifts or loans - with very expensive drugs - anticancer or antifungals -, a scam to the NHS, for the prosecution, of over a m
