This is a revelation from the investigative newspaper Mediapart. Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, interim Minister of Health after the resignation of Stéphane Rousseau, has been under preliminary investigation for several months. At issue: gifts that she received from a laboratory while she was a pharmacist, and which she did not declare.
Watches, telephones, champagne… or even boxes to go on a weekend away… In total, according to Mediapart, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo would have received 20,000 euros in gifts from Urgo laboratories, from 2015 to 2020. She was then a pharmacist in Le Havre. Expensive gifts that she would not have declared either to the National Assembly where she was elected in 2017, or to the Order of Pharmacists, even though the law obliges her to do so.
The pharmaceutical group Urgo was convicted in January 2023 for offering 55 million euros in gifts to pharmacists throughout France. In exchange, the latter obviously ordered Urgo products and above all waived commercial discounts. A system that allowed the company and healthcare professionals to enrich themselves on the backs of patients.
Justice is now interested in the thousands of pharmacists who benefited from it. The Minister of Health acknowledged this morning that she was the subject of an investigation and declared that she would reserve her explanations for the authorities. She should be summoned in January…