Palace of Justice in Florence – The first preliminary hearing of the trial against Menarini Farmaceutica is underway, with some local health authorities among the parties who have filed a civil action.
There is talk of damage of millions of euros for what would be a colossal scam against the state with almost 100,000 pages of deeds and documents collected in recent years. The accusation against the patron Alberto Sergio Aleotti is that of having defrauded health companies for 20 years with an increase in the prices of active ingredients. Lucia and Giovanni are also accused: for money laundering and tax evasion.
According to the logic that guided the investigators, Menarini would have practiced a system of fictitious passages between various ad hoc companies which bought and resold the active ingredient which thus increased in value.
With regard to the hearing held today, the defense team of Alberto Aleotti declares the following: “We consider the Gup's decision to evaluate the state of health and the procedural capacity of Dr. Alberto Aleotti, through the appointment of a board of qualified medical specialists of the court. For our part, despite the accusing hypotheses dating back to episodes of almost 30 years ago, we are able to demonstrate, drug by drug and price by price, the absolute non-existence of any scam and, therefore, of any type of damage."
Judicial history: "On February 14, 1994, the then sole director of the Menarini group, Alberto Aleotti was arrested in the context of a judicial investigation for having paid the general manager of the National Pharmaceutical Service, Duilio Poggiolini, the sum of 800 million lire in the period 1982 - 1988 to favor the marketing practices of his company's pharmaceutical products; Aleotti obtained a plea deal on the charge of corruption.
In 2003 the company was fined (together with four other pharmaceutical companies) a total of 30.5 million euros by the Antitrust for having created a "cartel" on the prices of tests for the detection of diabetes paid by the National Health Service.
In August 2010, the Italian judicial authorities ascertained the presence in Liechtenstein of funds under investigation for tax evasion, amounting to 476 million euros, owned by the owner of the group Alberto Aleotti. On 25 October 2010, the Florence Public Prosecutor's Office obtained the seizure of money and assets worth over one billion euros owned by the pharmaceutical company as part of an investigation into the company's top management aimed at ascertaining the crimes of criminal conspiracy, money laundering, aggravated fraud and tax violations relating to the five-year period 2004-2009 (for which the Tuscan Revenue Agency requested a sum of 3 billion euros from Alberto Aleotti ); the illegal importation of active pharmacological ingredients from China is also disputed. Senator Cesare Cursi (undersecretary of health at the time) is also involved in the investigation, suspected of the crime of corruption for having favored the pharmaceutical group in exchange for an editorial job for his wife's publishing house. The Court of Review of Florence reduced the seizure, on 16 November 2011, to the sum of 84.7 million euros. On 23 November 2011, by order of the Gip of the Court of Florence, the nucleus of the Carabinieri of the Nas of Florence proceeded with the preventive seizure of a further sum of 1,120,493,537.53 euros against Sergio Aleo
