"Dangerous pills for sale". Involved the deputy head of Aifa. Video on the bribes paid The investigation anticipated by the «Corriere». The investigators: in some cases even mortal risks
TURIN – Falsified research and trials on drugs, corrupt public officials, information never given or given very late on the side effects of some medicines thanks to the interested support of those who should have been vigilant. These are the hypotheses of the maxi-investigation, started by the Turin prosecutor's office and now shared with that of Rome, which yesterday led to eight arrests for corruption ordered by the deputy prosecutor Raffaele Guariniello, the first that the magistrate has ordered in the course of his long career . At the center of the investigations, conducted by the Nas who yesterday searched public offices and private homes in Rome, are the relations between Aifa, the Italian public agency that authorizes the marketing of drugs and any modifications thereof, also guaranteeing the correct information on their effects by the manufacturers, and the companies themselves. Not only bribes, therefore, but also potential dangers, "in some cases even fatal", for the health of unwitting consumers. Those arrested (three are already in prison, four under house arrest) are Pasqualino Rossi, number two of AIFA and Italian representative at EMEA, the European drug agency based in London, his collaborator Antonella Bove, then Matteo Mantovani , Sante Di Renzo, Mario Umbri, Piera Campanella and Francesca Fiorenza. The latter are all owners or employees of private companies that deal with institutional relations, similar to attorneys who act on behalf of the large pharmaceutical companies when the latter have to request new authorizations, equivalences between the generic and the specific drug, changes to the composition or information given to the public in the leaflets. It all started in 2005 with an apparently marginal episode: investigating a research carried out on volunteers in Turin to establish the equivalence between a generic product to be launched on the market and the old "branded" medicine, the prosecutor Guariniello discovered that the data had been falsified and that the people who had actually tested the medicine were much less than those declared. Since 2006, as Corriere della Sera had anticipated at the time, Nas and the Public Prosecutor's Office had launched a wide-ranging investigation to verify the seriousness of the research and the timeliness of the changes when, for example, a drug reveals side effects that had not been foreseen nor indicated in the "leaf". There are about thirty suspects, in Turin, Rome and other cities, and among them there are also illustrious names in Italian pharmacological research who may have put their signatures under wholly or partially compliant searches. Telephone interceptions and even a film shot by the carabinieri of the Nas would document the corruption network involving many pharmaceutical companies, including multinationals, and the public authorizations essential to their business, but also any alarms raised too late, perhaps after months that an effect unwanted collateral had been discovered by the producers. At the center of the attention of the magistrates (the two prosecutors Sara Panelli and Gianfranco Colace worked with Guariniello) are a thirty products, mostly generic, over-the-counter drugs for daily use but also life-saving. "In this case, corruption and the health risk made citizens run seem to intertwine - said Guariniello - and the network that is coming to light is propo
