The former INEM president, Luís Cunha Ribeiro, is being held in jail until his trial as the key defendant in the plasma corruption investigation, the Lisbon Criminal Investigation Court has announced.
Ribeiro will sit in jail until the investigation into corruption, money laundering and his free use of two luxury apartments is completed.
The former president of the Lisbon Regional Health Administration and of the National Institute of Medical Emergency (INEM) was arrested on Tuesday, December 13th during an investigation by the Anti-Corruption Unit of the Judiciary Police and the Department of Investigation and Criminal Action of Lisbon (DIAP).
The former official was grilled on Wednesday as part of the "O Negativo" investigation and on Thursday, the Attorney General's Office announced that a European Arrest Warrant had been issued to detain Paulo Lalanda e Castro, the former boss of plasma supplier Octapharma.
The Attorney General's Office stated that "the arrest, in fulfillment of this request for international judicial cooperation, occurred in the German city of Heidelberg."
Paulo Lalanda e Castro has already resigned his directorship of Octapharma, according to a statement from the pharmaceutical company.
On Friday, Ricardo Sá Fernandes, Lalanda e Castro's lawyer in another criminal investigation - Operation Marquês, filed an application in Lisbon requesting the revocation of the warrant in order to allow his client to return in freedom in Portugal to help in the investigation.
In the plasma investigation, suspicions are being investigated that Lalanda e Castro and Cunha Ribeiro, agreed that the latter would use his influence to unduly benefit Octapharma by arranging that the plasma supplier would continue its lucrative monopoly to supply Portugal’s ambulance and health services.
As part of this process, a representative of the Portuguese Haemophilia Association and two lawyers, also have been accused.
The arrests took place last week after more than 30 searches were carried out in official health-related establishments, including the Ministry of Health and the ambulance service HQ, as well as at law firms and the Octapharma office in Switzerland.
Questions now are being raised as to the conduct of Fernando Araújo, currently the Secretary of State for Health, who is the former director of the Immunohemotherapy service at the Hospital of St. João in Oporto.
An international plasma supply tendering process took place but despite controversy and protest from competitors, the pharmaceutical company Octapharma won the sole siupplier contract to Portugal's health service.
Although there were five competitors, Octapharma was the only company that could fulfill the stringent requirements to supply plasma in Portugal.
Fernando Araújo, now Secretary of State for Health "was directly involved" in a contest where the Octapharma was the only company that qualified as its competitors could not supply inactivated plasma, considered by Portugal’s Instituto Nacional da Farmácia e do Medicamento (Infarmed) as a medicine.
One Spanish company, Grifols, was not able to compete and went to Portugal’s Administrative Court, but lost the case.
