French court jails boss of company that sold faulty implants

The Frenchman who sold tens of thousands of faulty silicone breast implants around the world has been jailed for fraud.

With hundreds of women looking on, a court in Marseille handed Jean-Claude Mas, the founder of Poly Implant Prothese, the maximum four-year prison sentence on the aggravated fraud charge.

He was also fined €75,000.

Around 125,000 women underwent plastic surgery with PIP implants.

Defence lawyer Yves Haddad said Mas planned to appeal.

In a similar case, a commercial court last month ordered the German company TUeV, which cleared PIP for certification, to pay damages to more than 1,600 women and six distributors.

The implants were filled with industrial-grade silicone and were prone to leak.