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The Porto Court today sentenced a pharmacist from Póvoa de Lanhoso, Rosa Costa, and one of the five doctors allegedly involved in a fraud of 1.3 million to the National Health Service to six years and six months in prison.
The ruling obliges the São José Pharmacy, in Póvoa de Lanhoso, to pay a fine of 70,000 euros, and inhibits the two health professionals from practicing the profession.
The remaining four doctors were sentenced to between two and a half to two years, but their execution was suspended. They can continue to practice the profession.
The six defendants are jointly and severally liable for the payment to the State of the 1.3 million allegedly improperly stolen.
The jury considered that Dr. Abílio Pinto was like a ‘right hand’ of the pharmacist.
Speaking to O MINHO, lawyer João Magalhães, who defended one of the doctors with a suspended sentence, said that he will appeal to the Porto Appeals Court: “the sentence says that the five doctors had no economic advantage with the alleged crimes. Now, if that is the case, it makes no sense for them to be convicted of fraud, since this crime presupposes that something has been gained from their practice ”.
As far as we know, at least the pharmacist and the doctor will also appeal the decision.
Both were convicted of qualified fraud, document falsification, passive corruption, and computer fraud.
According to the prosecution, the doctors issued fraudulent prescriptions, as they did not correspond to any real clinical prescription, using data from their own patients or pharmacy clients indicated by the pharmacists.
“In these prescriptions, they invariably prescribe drugs with a high acquisition cost and a high reimbursement rate, mostly 90 percent, from the NHS,” he added.
“There was no loss”
In the final arguments, the Public Ministry had requested the conviction of the six defendants, while the defense lawyers considered that it had been proven that there was no crime, since the State had no loss with the issuance of income: The National Health Service , which will even have obtained profits, as demonstrated in the trial, the correlation must be immediate: if there is no loss, there is no crime ”, the lawyer from Braga João Magalhães, who defends one of the doctors, told O MINHO. For this reason, he stressed, all defended the acquittal of the six accused.
The position of the lawyers is related to the fact that a tax inspector -who integrated the investigation carried out in the criminal investigation by the GRA-PJ Asset Recovery Office- who said in court that the fraud at the Póvoa de Lanhoso Pharmacy did not harm the state. Thus, the alleged issuance of fraudulent prescriptions by the S. José pharmacy, in Póvoa de Lanhoso, will not have caused any damage to the public treasury, even before having benefited it.
According to the version of João Magalhães, the Inspector said that most of the so-called false prescriptions were ordered by the pharmacy to replace others that were in the accounting “on hold”, or because the client had not brought them when he went to fill it, leaving payment suspended until it was obtained from the family doctor, or because ARS-Norte (Northern Regional Health Administration) had withheld dozens of prescriptions for bureaucratic reasons, damaging the pharmacy’s treasury.
“From the Inspector’s testimony it is even deduced that the State still won,” the jurist stressed, but emphasizing that one thing is the alleged loss of the SNS (National Health Service) and another, which is also discussed in the ruling, to know if, when requesting false prescriptions, even for justified reasons, the pharmaceutical company will have committed a crime or not.
News updated at 6 pm with more information.
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