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PIP

Implant scandal boss put behind bars

The founder of the French breast implant company at the heart of a global health scare was jailed on Tuesday after failing to pay his bail, a source said.

Published: 7 March 2012 09:14 CET

Jean-Claude Mas, 72, was jailed at Marseille’s Baumette prison, the source said, requesting anonymity. His lawyer could not be contacted for confirmation late Tuesday.

In January he was charged with causing “involuntary injuries” but released on a €100,000 ($131,000) bail.

Mas is the founder of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), which shut down in 2010 after it was revealed to have been using substandard, industrial-grade silicone gel.

French officials have said that cancers, including 16 cases of breast cancer, had been detected in 20 French women with the implants, but have insisted there is no proven link.

Between 400,000 and 500,000 women in 65 countries are believed to have implants from PIP, once the world’s third-largest silicone implant producer.

The French government has advised 30,000 women to have their PIP implants removed, a call repeated in several other countries, including Germany and the Czech Republic.

However, Britain has said it will not issue similar advice.

Mas, a former travelling salesman who got his start in the medical business by selling pharmaceuticals, founded PIP in 1991 to take advantage of the booming market for cosmetic implants.

He reportedly told investigators that he used fake business data to fool health inspectors.

The substandard gel was in 75 percent of PIP breast implants, saving the company about one million euros ($1.3 million) annually, according to an ex-company executive.

In January police also arrested Claude Couty, another former executive at the now-defunct PIP, in southern France and charged him with causing “involuntary injuries”.

Breast implant scandal: Founder of firm jailed

A French court will hand out its verdict on a firm behind the scandal that saw thousands of women given industrial-grade silicone in breast implants. Photo: Webphotographer/Flickr

Jean-Claude Mas, the founder of PIP, the French firm at the centre of a global scandal over faulty breast implants, was convicted on Tuesday of fraud and sentenced to four years in prison.

Mas, dubbed "the sorcerer's apprentice of implants" by prosecutors, was also handed a €75,000 ($103,000) fine and banned permanently from working in medical services or running a company

Four other former PIP executives were also convicted and given lesser sentences.

The others jailed were PIP's former general manager Claude Couty, quality control director Hannelore Font, production director Loic Gossart and research director Thierry Brinon.

The scandal first emerged in 2010 after doctors noticed abnormally high rupture rates in PIP implants. It gathered steam worldwide in 2011, with some 300,000 women in 65 countries believed to have received the faulty implants.

Prosecutors had called for sentences of between six months and four years in prison for the accused.

They also urged the court to impose a €100,000 ($137,000) fine on Mas and ban him from working in medical services or from running a company.

During a month-long trial in Marseille in April, the defendants admitted to using the industrial-grade silicone but Mas, who has spent eight months in pre-trial detention, denied the company's implants posed any health risks.

More than 7,500 women have reported ruptures in the implants and in France alone 15,000 have had the PIP implants replaced.

But health officials in various countries have said they are not toxic and do not increase the risk of breast cancer.

The court did not rule on the question of whether the implants posed a risk, only whether the five managers defrauded their clients and German safety standards firm TUV, which approved the implants for market.

More than 7,000 women have declared themselves civil plaintiffs in the case and hundreds packed the court during the trial in April, which was moved to the Marseille convention centre.

Mas, a one-time travelling salesman who got his start in the medical business by selling pharmaceuticals, founded PIP in 1991 to take advantage of the booming market for cosmetic implants.

He built the company into the third-largest global supplier of implants, but came under the spotlight when plastic surgeons began reporting an unusual number of ruptures in his products.

Health authorities later discovered he was saving millions of euros by using industrial-grade gel in 75 percent of the implants. PIP's implants were banned and the company eventually liquidated.

PIP had exported more than 80 percent of its implants, with about half going to Latin America, about a third to other countries in western Europe, about 10 percent to eastern Europe and the rest to the Middle East and Asia.

Some of the defendants, including Mas, have also been charged in separate and ongoing manslaughter and financial fraud investigations into the scandal.

The manslaughter probe is related to the suspicious 2010 death from cancer of a woman who was fitted with the implants.

German firm TUV was last month found liable in the case, with a court in the French city of Toulon ruling that the German firm had "neglected its duties" by failing to properly verify the implants.

The company was ordered to pay more than 50 million euros in compensation to six distributors and to more than 1,600 women fitted with the implants.

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