Nello Martini cleared from charges after seven years

Nello Martini, ex director and founder of the Italian Agency of Medicines (AIFA, in Italian) previously committed for trial by the state’s attorney of Turin Guariniello with the charge of “involuntary disaster” (literal translation of an Italian legal term) for the delayed update of 20 drug information sheets over 15,000, has now been given a full acquittal.
In 2008, the enquiry about Nello Martini - under the Welfare Minister Maurizio Sacconi of Berlusconi’s then Government - caused his destitution as AIFA director, which he had founded in 2004, and the nomination of the new director Guido Rasi.
The charges against Martini, who had reformed the Medicine Department of the Health Ministry and then had transformed AIFA into an important Agency of European level, appeared as a pretext and without scientific basis to many and several Italian and European scientists challenged these accuses.
Now, after a trial that lasted for an unacceptable long time, Martini has been cleared from all charges. The Fifth Section of the Court of Rome has given him a full acquittal upon request of the state’s attorney himself. This sentence finally ends a very sad page of Healthcare in Italy and shows the clamorous inconsistency, from a scientific point of view, of the critics to Nello Martini’s actions.