The investigation into bribes for supplies to the Cancer Institute Pascale of Naples also involves the province of Latin. Among those arrested there is also the legal representative of one of the supplier companies, Led spa of Aprilia, Marco Mauti, 52, ended up under house arrest along with six other people. Instead, an employee of the Aprilia company is under investigation, Mattia Tommasi, 25 years old, originally from Genzano.
THE INVESTIGATION. High, very high profits, obtained by making money on the sale - without tenders - of equipment for the treatment of neoplasms at the Naples Pascale cancer institute, the most important in Southern Italy, thanks to the complacency of the one who was supposed to supervise. Bribes also on anti-tumor drugs and needles. The Guardia di Finanza of Naples has notified six precautionary measures under house arrest against as many people including the chief physician Francesco Izzo, 51, nephew of the former health minister Francesco De Lorenzo and director of the complex abdominal oncological surgery structure of the Pascale; Izzo's wife, Giulia Di Capua, 45 years old, to whom the companies that supplied the equipment can be traced, and the administrative manager of the time, Elia Abbondante, 52 years old, today general manager of the ASL Napoli 1 Centro (structure finished under spotlight for maxi-absenteeism in the Loreto Mare hospital). A seventh person, the recipient of a precautionary measure, is currently untraceable. In total there are thirteen people under investigation.
The purchases took place without Abbondante, at the time solely responsible for the Pascale procedure, blocking the clearly illegitimate administrative procedures activated by Izzo. According to the indictment, the Izzo-Di Capua spouses exploited the emergency procedures and the alleged exclusivity of the production of the machinery. From 2012 to December 2015, in the coffers of companies attributable to the couple - the Gi.Med. and the Gdc Medicali – almost two million euros would have ended up, practically the same sum that the financiers seized from the spouses on the orders of the judicial authority between current accounts, movable and immovable property.
During the investigative activity it was also discovered that a scientific informant, Marco Argenziano, 59 years old (among those arrested) would have paid a bribe of ten thousand euros to Izzo to push him to double (the facts date back to 2015), the prescriptions and therefore the orders for a particular anti-tumor drug, Nexavar, based on the active ingredient Serafenib, produced and marketed by Bayer and administered to cancer patients. «Until the purchases went ahead privately - said Colonel Giovanni Salerno, commander of the Tax Police Unit of the Guardia di Finanza of Naples - the cost of a certain type of needles was around 2200-2300 euros. With the tender, however, the same type of needles is
cost the Pascale institute around 1500 euros».
The Deputy Prosecutor of Naples Alfonso D'Avino (in the picture), who coordinated the investigation by the deputy prosecutors Celeste Carrano and Henry John Woodcock, expressed bitterness at what emerged from the investigative activity: «After more than 20 years we continue to talk about drug kickbacks», he said speaking to reporters. Indeed, in the 1990s, the magistrate, together with the current regent of the Neapolitan public prosecutor's office, Nunzio Fragliasso, conducted the investigation into the bribes in the health sector which involved the former minister Francesco De Lorenzo, Izzo's uncle, and Duilio Poggiolini, at the time general manager of the National Pharmaceutical Service.
The yellow flames also served house arrest on Sergio Mariani, 46, director, but only formally, of the companies Gimed and Gdc Medicali, attributable to Giulia Di Capua; and to Marco Mauti, 52, legal representative of one of the supplier companies involved in the investigation, Led spa of Aprilia.
Posted by Editorial board – Latina24ore.it – 10/03/2017
