French prosecutors want jail term for drug company chief over weight loss pill deaths

Hundreds of deaths in France have been linked to the diet pills

Prosecutors in France are taking action against a drugs firm which supplied diet pills linked to hundreds of deaths. EPA/CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON

French prosecutors have called for a drug company chief to be jailed over a diabetes and weight loss pill blamed for hundreds of deaths, in one of the country's worst health scandals.

Mediator was on the market for 33 years and used by about five million people before being pulled in 2009 over concerns that it could cause serious heart problems.

It was withdrawn more than a decade after concerns were first raised.

On Tuesday, prosecutors said Jean-Philippe Seta, who was second in command at drug company Servier, should be jailed for five years for his role in the scandal.

They said his company should be fined €8.2 million (Dh34m/$9.2m) for fraudulently concealing the drug's risks.

Mr Seta and Servier deny the allegations and have maintained that they did not know the drug was dangerous until 2009.

By then it had already been banned in the US, Spain and Italy.

The national medicines watchdog is also on trial, with prosecutor Aude Le Guilcher saying it failed in its mission and should be fined €200,000.

Victims have submitted almost 10,500 claims for compensation from Servier, totalling more than €1 billion, and many have accepted payment in return for not taking part in criminal proceedings.

About 500 people are thought to have died as a result of the drug, although experts say it may eventually cause as many as 2,100 deaths.

Servier "deliberately made the cynical choice not to take into account the risks", Ms Le Guilcher said.

She claimed the company "made the grim bet that these risks would be minimal in terms of patients affected".

"Your judgment, by the red lines that it will draw, must contribute to restoring the confidence betrayed by a firm that put its financial interests before the interest of patients," Ms Le Guilcher told the judge.

Eleven others are on trial, including doctors who were members of the medicine watchdog, pharma company consultants and former senator Marie-Therese Hermange, who produced a report said to be favourable to Servier.

In 2015, a civil court found Servier negligent for having left "defective" medicine on the market.

The trial, which began last September, is set to conclude in July with a verdict expected next year.