Jail Sentence for PIP Founder

Jean-Claude Mas, the founder of the French breast implant company PIP, was jailed for four years in December 2013, after being found guilty of aggravated fraud.

The 74-year-old started his career in the medical business by selling pharmaceuticals, having previously been a travelling salesman. He jumped on the bandwagon of the booming cosmetic implant industry and founded Poly Implant Prothèse in 1991. He grew the company aggressively until it was the third-largest supplier of implants worldwide. But everything started to collapse when plastic surgeons began reporting an unusually high number of ruptures with the PIP implants, compared to other makes. Once health authorities began to investigate the issue, they discovered that PIP was saving an estimated one million Euros in annual profit, by using unapproved, industrial-grade gel in 75% of the implants.

The company was shut down in 2010 and its products were banned. The following year, fears spread across the globe after the French health authorities advised 30,000 women to have their PIP implants removed. It was estimated that some 47,000 British women were also affected, out of approximately 400,000 women in 65 countries in total. Read our PIP Implant article for the full details on the health scare.

The month-long trial, through April and May 2013, was the biggest and most expensive in French history. The court found that the defendants had sought to conceal the sub-standard silicone used, and four other PIP executives were also convicted with lesser sentences by the court in Marseille. Along with the stretch in jail, Mas was ordered to pay a €75,000 fine and has been permanently banned from working in medical services or running a company.

Cheers erupted in the courtroom when the verdict was read out, but for the tens of thousands of women who have yet to receive compensation, the sentence was not enough. Mas continued to deny that the implants were harmful, or posed a serious health risk, and referred to the thousands of women claiming compensation as ‘money grabbers’ – that, coming from a man with two £1million properties, one in the South of France and one in Luxembourg.

Richard Langton, a lawyer from Slater & Gordon, the firm representing more than 200 British women, told The Daily Mail: “Now that the criminal trial in France is over, we can hopefully pursue a claim in England, if at all possible, on behalf of women who would otherwise go uncompensated.” Like the French courts, they are also pursuing a claim against TÜV Rheinland, the German company that awarded EU safety certificates to PIP and failed to spot the fraud.

The president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), Rajiv Grover, explained: “There can be no way of compensating the victims of PIP for the scale of this betrayal, and in that respect no sentencing can ever be adequate punishment. Whilst there is no way for regulation to prevent criminal behaviour, undoubtedly the system failed hundreds of thousands of women worldwide.”

Mas is also facing a second trial for causing involuntary harm, but the case is unlikely to come to court for several years. In the meantime, he showed no sign of emotion when he was sentenced to jail and his lawyer confirmed he would appeal, blaming the severity of the ruling on media pressure.


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