Ex Social Security director jail bound

THE CRIMINAL Chamber of Panama’s Supreme Court overturned the ruling of the Second Court of Justice and has sentenced the former director of the Social Security Fund (CSS), René Luciani, to 18 months in prison for his responsibility in the case of massive poisoning of patients with a cough syrup mixed with diethylene glycol.

Other implicated in the poisoning, Ignacio Torres Echeverría, Linda Joan Thomas Martín (ex-lab head) and Pablo Narciso Solís González (former director of Pharmacy and Drugs) received the same conviction, as Luciani, considering them as authors in the process.

Teófilo Gateno Hafeitz (director of Medicom, a supplier of diethylene glycol) was sentenced to 5 years in prison for being a primary accomplice.

Chronology
Massive diethylene glycol poisoning occurred in 2006

In 2003, glycerin was purchased from Medicom to produce medicinal products.

Its content was a compound with a considerable percentage of the substance known as diethylene glycol used as anti- freeze windshield washer.

The first death from the compound  recorded on August 2, 2006.

The hearing of the case began, March 21 2016  and ended on April 8, 2016.

All of them had been acquitted by the Second Tribunal on the basis of supposed deficiencies in the processes of purchase of the raw material, its introduction and final analysis.

In the case of Angel Ariel De La Cruz, Edward Enrique Taylor Jurado and Miguel Antonio Algandona De León, the Criminal Chamber sentenced them to 15 years in prison and disqualification to exercise public functions for the same term.

Nereida Isabel Quintero Ortiz de Velasco and Marta Cristell Sánchez Bustamante de Castillo were sentenced to 12 months imprisonment and disqualification for the exercise of public functions for the same term.

The immediate detention of the convicted persons was ordered,

Background
In October 2003, the company Medicom S.A. Imported Glycerin Pure USP quality for human consumption, to supply the Social Security Fund. The product was used for the preparation of medicines such as sugar-free expectorant syrup and diphenhydramine among others, by the institution’s Drug Production Laboratory which  in the end proved that its content was not what was  contractually required but a compound with a considerable percentage of diethylene glycol and whose large-scale use generated a massive poisoning of patients and consumers users killing hundreds.  The first recorded death was known on August 2, 2006, and hundreds more were left with lifelong disabilities.