Jean-Claude Mas: the man behind the silicone scandal

By Clare Byrne and Ralf E Krueger Jan 27, 2012, 14:42 GMT

Paris - With his grey beard, balding pate, ruddy complexion and large glasses, Jean-Claude Mas cuts a benign, almost grandfatherly figure.

But for the hundreds of thousands of women worldwide who received his faulty breast implants, his face inspires loathing and revulsion.

Seeing the 72-year-old Frenchman finally arrested Thursday on suspicion of causing bodily harm by filling his implants with a cheap sub-standard silicone gel brought a measure of relief to some.

Mas was arrested at his luxury villa on the Cote d'Azur Thursday.

A judge in Marseille released him a few hours later on bail of 100,000 euros (130,000 dollars).

'It's come late, but at least it's happened,' Philippe Courtois, a lawyer representing an association of PIP implant wearers said.

The president of the Association for the Defence of PIP Implant Wearers, Alexandra Blachere, said she was 'relieved' at his arrest but disappointment at his subsequent release.

'With all the victims and all the prejudice, he hasn't paid a high price,' Le Monde newspaper quoted her as saying.

For months the association has warned that Mas, who faces a separate case for fraud later this year was a flight risk. Over 2,500 women have asked to join the case as civil plaintiffs, meaning Mas could face a hefty bill in damages.

But with Interpol seeking his arrest for alleged drunk driving in Costa Rica two years ago - and his implants have made him persona non grata in dozens of countries where they were exported, Mas, it seems, had few flight options.

By his account, he has done no harm anyway.

'I knew the gel wasn't graded but I used it deliberately because the PIP gel was cheaper ... and of better quality,' Mas told police in 2010, according to copies of the police report seen by French media.

French health authorities, who banned the implants in 2010, take a different view.

The health ministry in December advised all 30,000 French women who received the implants to have them 'explanted,' saying they present an unacceptably high rupture rate and that the leaked gel can cause irritation.

Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Venezuela have since followed suit as the ripples of fear spread to around 400,000 women believed to have the implants.

And yet, despite the scale of the scandal, little is known about the main protagonist.

French media have worked hard at piecing together a picture of the entrepreneur, who began working as a salesman for the US pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb before setting himself up in the lucrative field of implant manufacturing.

Despite having no chemistry training, Mas developed his own filling for silicone implants.

In 1991 he founded Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) in La Seyne-sur-Mer and began producing implants that were far cheaper than rival models.

Mas later admitted to police that 'everything was organized to escape controls' by a German vetting agency and that his sole motivation was profitability.

One former employee told police that the father of two, who appears in old photographs in a laboratory white coat, proudly holding up a flesh-coloured implant, considered himself a brilliant inventor.

The man who spelt his name to one French journalist as 'JC, like Jesus Christ' apparently still believes in his inventive powers.

In a telephone interview with RTL radio in mid-January Mas lashed out at Health Minister Xavier Bertrand for recommending women remove the implants, calling it a 'criminal decision' and describing the ministry's warnings about the rupture rate as 'rubbish.'

The women who were taking legal action against him were either 'fragile people' or 'people just doing it for the money,' he claimed in yet another interview.

Many of his victims believe his outbursts mask a cunning strategist, who organized the insolvency of his company and stashed his money in entities in Luxembourg, the Virgin Islands and the United States.

According to Libération daily Mas transferred all his shares in PIP to his companion and her son in September 2010. His home is in his companion's name.