She is the subject of a legal investigation for having received, as a pharmacist in Le Havre, gifts from Urgo laboratories with a total value of 20,000 euros, according to Mediapart.
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The Minister of Health Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, accused of illicit gifts received as part of her profession as a pharmacist, refuted to AFP everything “conflict of interest”, Sunday December 31, on the sidelines of a visit to the Rouen University Hospital. “On the matter to which you are referring, I am very calm”, declared the minister. She is the subject of a legal investigation for having received, as a pharmacist in Le Havre, gifts from Urgo laboratories, which were allegedly offered to her from 2015 to 2020 for a total value of 20,000 euros, according to Mediapart.
“Like 8 000 of my former colleagues, I will be heard in the so-called Urgo affair. I prefer to respond on the merits to the competent authorities, social networks are not the judges”, she continued. For Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, in this matter, “there is no conflict of interest, no benefit in kind, no gift, there are commercial negotiations”. Has she considered resigning following these revelations? “Maybe”she replied, before repeating being “very calm on the merits of the case”.
The gifts were offered by Urgo in exchange for a waiver by the pharmacist of a commercial discount from the laboratory to the pharmacy. This prohibited practice affected a large number of pharmacists. The laboratory was sentenced in January 2023 to a fine of 1.125 million euros, including 625,000 euros suspended, by the Dijon criminal court, after an investigation by the repression of fraud (DGCCRF).
