A reported 50 police carried out further searches today, this time at hospitals in Lisbon and Oporto, as part of the contuning plasma supply corruption case named, Operation O Negative, and made three doctors arguidos - official suspects.
In December last year, the then administrator of Octapharma, Paulo Lalanda e Castro, was arrested in Germany and later released under caution to appear in Lisbon to answer further questions relating to allegations that he corrupted NHS officials and others to ensure his company was the sole supplier of plasma products to Portugal’s health and emergency services.
Today’s police statement reads that "as part of Operation O Negative, related to the investigation of fraud with and within the National Health Service, several searches and seizures occurred in residences, accounts departments, medical offices and facilities in Lisbon and Oporto, with the objective of detecting and seizing information.”
In the course of the day's proceedings, "three physicians specialising in immunohaemotherapy were constituted as defendants."
"It is recalled that this investigation is investigating facts related to obtaining, by illicit means, a dominant position in supplying the National Health Service with blood products and inactivated human plasma and the possible crimes of passive and active corruption, undue receipt of advantage and money laundering," read the police summary.
Today’s searches bring the total to 30 in an operation that has led police to Switzerland and Germany.
The former boss of Octapharma, Paulo Lalanda e Castro, also is accused in Operation Marques which is investigating the former Prime Minister José Sócrates and in the Golden Visa corruption case.
The former president of Portugal’s medical Emergency Institute, Cunha Ribeiro, has been accused of favouring Octapharma and receiving benefits as a result. Ribeiro was arrested on December 13th, 2016 and two lawyers and the head of the Portuguese Hemophilia Association were made suspects.
Lalanda and Castro resigned as the head of Octapharma when the plasma scandal broke.
The case is based on a 1999 decision to award the Swiss pharmaceutical company Octapharma a contract to supply inactivated plasma to Portugal’s National Health Service hospitals. The company has had the contract ever since.
At that time, Cunha Ribeiro was then chairman of the committee deciding of who would get the contract. This went to Octapharma at a cost of €137 million.
The doctors that today were questioned and made official suspects were part of the decision-making process that ensured, come what may, Octapharma held on to the highly lucrative contract.
It seems there is no area left in Portugal’s public services that is not tainted with the suspicion of corruption.
