This is the conclusion ofan appeal process that lasted six months. The Servier Group, which marketed the Mediator, was sentenced on appeal on Wednesday December 20 to a fine of more than 7 million euros and to reimburse social security institutions and mutual societies more than 415 million euros.

The pharmaceutical company was found guilty of all the crimes it was accused of, including fraud, for which it was acquitted in the first instance.

Servier is blamed for hundreds of deaths

Mediator, a flagship molecule of Servier, was marketed in 1976 as an adjuvant to antidiabetic treatments but, until its ban in 2009, was often illegally prescribed as an appetite suppressant and has caused severe cardiovascular lesions in thousands of patients. He is blamed for hundreds of deaths.

In March 2021, as part of the first instance trial, the Paris criminal court sentenced the six Servier laboratory companies to an estimated fine of 2.7 million euros “from 1995 onwards, enough information to become aware of the deadly risks” related to the mediator.

In particular, the public prosecutor’s office accuses Servier of continuing to market Mediator without informing patients about the risks involved, with the aggravating fact that this risk had an impact on their state of health.

A total of 7,650 people took part in the trial as civil parties, most of them in the section “Illusion”. About 5,000 additional cases of homicide or involuntary bodily harm are still being investigated by Paris prosecutors, paving the way for a likely second mediator trial in the coming years.