A French scientist who manufactures a pseudo-medicinal product called G5 or Silanol in Co Mayo has been convicted of illegally practising medicine and pharmacology by a court in Bordeaux.
"France is finished for me. Ireland is not like France. I'm going back to Ireland," Loïc le Ribault told journalists as he left the courtroom. He received a one-year prison term, of which six months is a suspended sentence.
Although le Ribault returned to Gradignan prison last night, his lawyer's office said the parole judge agreed to release him in about 10 days, because he has already served five months in preventive detention.
Le Ribault was also fined a total of €28,000, of which €20,000 will go to the doctors' and pharmacists' associations which filed the complaints that led to his conviction.
Calling le Ribault "a modern-day charlatan", the prosecutor had recommended a two-year prison sentence, of which one year suspended, and €35,000 in fines.
A spokeswoman for the Irish Medicines Board said G5 (which is 98 per cent water, the other main ingredient being organic silica) was taken off the market in Ireland last July.
The claims surrounding G5 - not safety - were at issue, the spokeswoman said. Therefore le Ribault is still allowed to export the product from Ireland. "They are not allowed to advertise," she added.
"I never said that Silanol cured people," le Ribault said during his trial. "It restructures the immune defences of the organism." A litre of G5 liquid costs €38.11. The leaflet accompanying the product vaunts its "extraordinary properties which can assist you in numerous various diseases." According to le Ribault, G5 has helped patients suffering from herpes, hepatitis, asthma, cancer, AIDS, rheumatism and cardiovascular disease. Le Monde reported that his Irish laboratory sells between 14,000 and 15,000 litres over the Internet each month, for an annual turnover of €1.5 million.
In the 1980s, le Ribault became well known as a forensic scientist who cracked impenetrable murder mysteries.
The French police and gendarmerie maintained contracts with his CARME laboratory, which went bankrupt in 1991 when the police began doing their own lab work. Le Ribault has accused the security forces of having "ruined, cheated, plagiarised and defamed" him.
One of le Ribault's exploits was to prove that earth on a spade in the van of the accused serial killer, Pierre Chanal, was identical to that in the grave of the Irishman, Trevor O'Keeffe, who was murdered in France in August 1987.
"He is a brilliant scientist," Mrs Eroline O'Keeffe, Trevor's mother, said yesterday. "But I think he conned people with his G5 water."
After his bankruptcy, le Ribault developed Silanol, which he renamed G5 and began marketing without a licence in 1995. His conviction yesterday is in connection with sales in France in the mid-1990s.
He has lived in Ireland since 1998 and was arrested in Switzerland last November 21st, where he was imprisoned until his transfer to Bordeaux for trial at the beginning of this month.