Nine months after her departure from the government, the former Minister of Health Agnès Firmin Le Bodo was sentenced, on Monday, October 14, by the criminal court of Le Havre, according to information from Half part confirmed by Agence France-Presse and the world, THURSDAY.
The one who is now a deputy (Horizontes) for Sena Maritime appeared in the framework of a hearing on prior recognition of guilt (CRPC) – an adaptation of the American “culpity declaration” – to confirm that she had accepted, without declaring them, gifts received from the Urgo laboratories , when I was a pharmacist.
She was sentenced to a light fine (8,000 euros, of which 4,000 euros were suspended) and to confiscation of the gifts seized during the investigation. This sentence, negotiated with the prosecution within the framework of its CRPC, was validated by an independent approval judge. Contacted, Mme Firmin Le Bodo did not respond to our request.
20,000 euros in gifts
The elected official, who ran a pharmacy in Le Havre, “is suspected of having received luxury products on 21 occasions, from 2015 to 2020 – watches, bottles of wine and magnums of champagne, boxes for weekends, etc. – for a total amount estimated at 20,000 euros, from Urgo laboratories »had revealed Half part in December 2023, revealing the existence of an open preliminary investigation into pharmacists who received gifts offered by Urgo laboratories, in exchange for their renunciation of commercial discounts.
However, since the “anti-gift” law of 2004, expanded in 2017, the acceptance of this type of gift by pharmacists is illegal. “There is no conflict of interest, no benefit in kind, no gift, there are commercial negotiations”said then the one who was still a minister.
The open investigation into the recipients of the gifts is a consequence of that carried out on the Urgo company by the Dijon prosecutor’s office, the jurisdiction on which the group’s headquarters depend. In January 2023, the laboratory was sentenced to pay a fine of 1,125 million euros, of which 625,000 euros were suspended, as well as the confiscation of several million euros, also within the framework of a CRPC procedure.
