Jail Terms for Poly Implant Prothese Executives

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MIREGMGR

From the New York Times, 2013DEC10:

Defective Breast Implant Sales Draw Prison Term for French Executive

By MA?A de la BAUME Published: December 10, 2013

PARIS — A court in Marseille, France, sentenced the founder of a French company on Tuesday to four years in prison for selling hundreds of thousands of defective breast implants in more than 65 countries.

Jean-Claude Mas, 74, the founder of Poly Implant Prothese, and four of his former employees were found guilty last spring of aggravated fraud after their company used a less expensive, industrial-grade silicone to fill implants for a decade. The implants ruptured at a much higher rate than the industry norm, leaking silicone into body tissues.

During the trial, which involved 7,400 civil plaintiffs and 300 lawyers, Mr. Mas acknowledged that his company had used a cheaper, unapproved product in its implants, but he argued that it was not harmful.

More than 16,000 women have had their implants removed since the scandal emerged in 2010. Poly Implant Prothese, which was founded in 1991, was closed by the French authorities in March 2010.

In addition to imposing the maximum prison sentence on Mr. Mas, the court ordered him to pay a fine of 75,000 euros, or $103,000, and sentenced his former employees to between 18 months and three years in prison. Some of those sentences were suspended. Yves Haddad, Mr. Mas’s lawyer, said that his client would appeal.

Last month a French court ordered a German quality-control company to pay $4,000 each to 1,600 women who received defective breast implants made by PIP. The German company, TUV Rheinland, was accused of granting European Union safety certificates to the defective implants.

About 300,000 women around the world received the implants, which were not approved for sale in the United States.
 
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kgott

Re: Jail Terms for Poly Implant Proth?se Executives

Is aggravated fraud a lessor charge than aggravated assault??
 
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