Source: Correio Braziliense - DF - BRAZIL - 14/08/2009

Rio de Janeiro - In the episodes that shocked Brazil and served as a first alert to the risk of counterfeiting medicines and medical equipment, involving the Celobar and Androcur brands, the feeling of impunity was what was left for the victims' families, in addition to the homesickness. In the sixth report in the Counterfeit Cure series, the Correio / Estado de Minas shows that the sale of the Celobar laboratory to a Uruguayan off-shore company, just a few months before the scandal, may have facilitated the concealment of assets by the owner, Rio de Janeiro businessman Márcio D'Icarahy. Sentenced to prison, he never went to a cell, because he appealed in freedom. Same case of the businessman José Celso Machado de Melo, responsible for the distribution of the fake Androcur. He opened a cosmetics company, which are also treated by Anvisa as health products. José Celso rides in a R $ 90 car and divides the weekends between the farm and the cave he bought near Belo Horizonte.

Counterfeiting the contrast for Celobar brand radiographs completes six years without the families of the 22 victims of the drug having any prospect of receiving reparations for the episode. That's because a few months before the scandal involving the Rio laboratory Enila, responsible for the manufacture of the drug, a Uruguayan offshore company, Medvac Med Y Vacunas Interamericanas, acquired no less than 62% of the laboratory.

In 2003, the adulteration of the contrast killed two dozen people and left another 250 with sequelae. The company's registration in Uruguay, obtained by the Correio / Estado de Minas, shows that all the acts of administration, appropriation and disposition of Medvac's assets in the neighboring country were delegated, at the time, to Paulo Henrique Oliveira Rocha Lins. This is the lawyer for businessman Márcio D'Icarahy Câmara Lima, the owner of the Enila laboratory. He also held a power of attorney to defend the interests of Medvac Brasil. The commercial secrecy guaranteed by the Uruguayan government to the companies installed there prevented the Brazilian Justice from knowing who were the real owners of Medvac and the assets they had.

As the bankruptcy of the Enila Laboratory was declared shortly after the scandal involving Celobar, it was left to former employees and victims of the drug to fight for the appropriation of real estate that has not been sold, but that still needs to go to auction. This process became even slower after a former company employee, Joelson Reis, decided to move to the old liquid factory to contrast with his father, brother, and more than 100 mongrel dogs that he collected down the street. “I only leave here when they pay me R $ 350 thousand in compensation,” he guarantees.

Lawyer for two of the 22 victims of Celobar, Ricardo Dezzani, bets on a new strategy to guarantee payment to his clients: collect the bill from the multinational drug company Glaxo Smithkline, under the allegation that the company and Enila Laboratory were part of the same economic group at the time of the episode involving Celobar. The connection between the two firms would have been made by Glaxo itself, in a process that was processed at the 27th Federal Court of Rio de Janeiro, due to the fact that the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) declared the loss of rights over a brand that both used.

The Labor Court also issued decisions that considered the two companies to be part of the same group. “The last possibility for the victims' relatives to receive any compensation depends on this connection. But, the process is very slow in court, ”says Dezzani. Glaxosmithline Brasil disputes the attorney's claim and states that it has nothing to do with the conduct practiced by the Enila laboratory, so it could not be held responsible for what happened, nor pay compensation for the mistake made by another company.

In January of this year, the director-president of the Enila Laboratory, Márcio D'Icarahy, was sentenced by the 38th Criminal Court of Rio to 20 years of imprisonment in a closed regime. In the same sentence, the company's chemist, Antônio Carlos da Fonseca Silva, responsible for the manufacture of the substance, was sentenced to 22 years. But the two appealed the sentence and are at liberty, which revolts relatives and friends of the victims. D'Icarahy no longer lives in the luxurious building where he lived in Barra da Tijuca. The Court of Justice of Rio has difficulty finding it. He runs away from bailiffs, so he is only cited by notice in the proceedings in which he appears as a defendant.

1 - Backyard manufacturing

In February 2002, laboratory Enila, maker of Celobar, received 6 tons of barium sulfate from the German laboratory Sachtleben Cheme, one of four in the world with manufacturing authorization. He did not pay for the order and the company cut off the supply. The following year, the Rio laboratory decided to produce the substance in its own backyard, without having technical competence. From barium chemical reactions, laboratory technicians produced carbonate, instead of sulfate. The substance is poisonous and used to kill mice. The failure of the experiment did not prevent the company from selling 4.500 units of Celobar to clinics and hospitals across the country, mainly in Goiás.