Argentine Justice ruled this Thursday to indict Ariel Fernando García, owner of the pharmaceutical companies that produced the contaminated fentanyl that caused a health tragedy in the country, and 16 other defendants for the crime of “adulteration of medicinal substances that resulted in the death of at least 20 people”.
The federal judge in charge of the case, Ernesto Kreplak, ordered the prosecution and converted the detention of Ariel Fernando García, principal owner of the HLB Pharma and Laboratorios Ramallo laboratory, into pre-trial detention, on whom patrimonial inhibition was also maintained and an embargo was issued on his assets for the sum of one billion pesos (743 million dollars).
The magistrate considered him “criminally liable as a co-perpetrator of the crime of adulteration of medicinal substances that resulted in the death of at least 20 people, in real competition with the crime of adulteration of medicinal substances in a manner dangerous to health”, according to the ruling accessed by EFE.
While 20 cases were studied to date by the experts appointed by the court, the Justice system has managed to identify, at the moment, “124 deceased patients with possible association to the outbreak due to the administration of contaminated fentanyl”, according to the judicial resolution.
“The remaining cases continue to be analyzed by the expert body and will, if applicable, be subject to an extension of the indictment in due course,” explains Kreplak in the ruling.
For the same crime, the processing, preventive detention, and an embargo of 500 billion pesos (about 371 million dollars) were also ordered for his brother Diego Hernán García and his mother, Nilda Furfaro, as well as three employees of HLB Pharma and Laboratorios Ramallo: Javier Martín Tchukrán (General Director), José Antonio Maiorano (Technical Director), and Carolina Ansaldi (Laboratorios Ramallo SA).
Seven other employees with hierarchical and technical positions were also processed, without preventive detention.
In total, 17 people have been prosecuted by the Justice System.
The case has been under investigation by the Argentine Justice system since May 12th, after the Hospital Italiano in the Buenos Aires city of La Plata reported an outbreak of intrahospital infections that did not respond to usual causes.
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Fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid, used as an analgesic and anesthetic, was administered to patients in intensive care units of at least twenty medical centers in different parts of the country.
Through subsequent studies by the state-run Malbrán Institute, it was confirmed that the bacteria isolated in the samples taken from infected patients genetically matched those detected in the fentanyl ampoules seized at Laboratorio Ramallo and HLB Pharma.
