This judicial information follows reports received in October 2021 and May 2022 from the ANSM (Editor’s note: National Medicines Safety Agency), and not the request sent Monday by the Ministers of Health and Research to the prosecution of Marseille to seize «crimes or serious breaches of health or research regulations» observed at the IHU.
The ministers’ request, based on a damning report from the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas) and its counterpart for higher education and research (IGESR), had not yet reached the Marseille prosecutor on Tuesday morning. , added the prosecution to AFP.
On July 4, the Marseille public prosecutor’s office opened a judicial investigation for «forgery in writing», «use of forgery in writing» and «interventional research involving a human person not justified by his usual care without obtaining the opinion of the committee for the protection of persons and the authorization of the ANSM», the Marseille prosecutor’s office told AFP on Tuesday.
The ANSM had notably noted «serious breaches of the regulations for research involving the human person», during irregular clinical trials.
On Monday, Ministers Sylvie Retailleau and François Braun estimated in a joint press release that another report, published by Igas and IGESR, «highlights serious dysfunctions» within the Mediterranean University Hospital Institute infection (IHU-MI), created in 2011 and directed by Pr Didier Raoult until the end of August.
“Several elements” in this new report are “likely to constitute offenses or serious breaches of the regulations in terms of health or research”, write the ministers.
François Crémieux, the director of the AP-HM (public hospitals of Marseille), assured in the newspaper La Provence on Tuesday that the establishment «shares the observation of the managerial excesses of certain hospital-university managers occupying key positions within the infectious diseases cluster».
«I regret that the IGAS / IGAENR mission does not take into account the detailed answer on the legal and scientific levels that I provided to them», regretted Didier Raoult in a tweet on Tuesday, inviting Internet users to read it in extenso in line.
In his response to Igas and Igesr, Didier Raoult believes that this report «mainly focused on compiling derogatory comments against the director of IHU-MI». The former director of the IHU deplores «a lack of distance from the mission which is thus more akin to a commando mission than to an inspection in the service of the French State.»
Asked about Cnews on Tuesday, the researcher regretted: «This is one more episode in the fact that I am harassed for having said what everyone is doing now, including on vaccines (…)», ensuring that he was «very serene»: «I did what I thought I should do at a time when the French State thought it was necessary to have institutes specializing in infectious diseases».