" French pharma firm found guilty over medical scandal in which up to 2,000 died", 29 Mar 2021

A French court has fined one of the country’s biggest pharmaceutical firms €2.7m (£2.3m) after finding it guilty of deception and manslaughter over a pill linked to the deaths of up to 2,000 people.

In one of the biggest medical scandals in France, the privately owned laboratory Servier was accused of covering up the potentially fatal side-effects of the widely prescribed drug Mediator...

As many as 5 million people took the drug between 1976 and November 2009 when it was withdrawn in France, long after it was banned in Spain and Italy. It was never authorised in the UK or US...

“Despite knowing of the risks incurred for many years, … they [Servier] never took the necessary measures and thus were guilty of deceit,” said the president of the criminal court, Sylvie Daunis.

The pharmaceutical group was acquitted of charges of fraud...

Lawyers for Servier argued that the company was unaware of the risks associated with Mediator before 2009, and said it had never pretended it was a diet pill.