Conflicts of interest: the Senate takes legal action against Professor Aubier

The Senate did not taste the memory lapses of Professor Michel Aubier. After the revelation by Release and The chained Duck links of interest between the pulmonologist and Total, the upper house of Parliament has decided to take legal action, and this is a first, underlines The world.

On April 16, 2015, Professor Michel Aubier, pulmonologist at Bichat Hospital, was heard by the commission of inquiry into the cost of air pollution. It was initially Martin Hirsch, director of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), who was to go there, but he had asked Michel Aubier to replace him, relates Le Figaro. It must be said that for several years, Professor Aubier was considered an expert in pollution; he had also expressed himself on numerous occasions in the media on the subject.

As is customary in such circumstances, before speaking to the Senate committee, the doctor was questioned about his possible conflicts of interest. “I have no link of interest with economic players”, he would then have replied.
We now know that Michel Aubier was paid for a long time by the oil company Total, and that he has even been on the board of directors since 2009. The doctor has since explained that he had not declared these links, because they did not, in his view, constitute a source of conflict of interest. He thus justified that his activities within the Total group were in no way related to the topics on which he was also consulted as an expert. “I never did anything for them regarding pollution. I was dealing with health policy, especially with H1N1 or Ebola”, he explained to the Figaro.

Explanations that will not have been enough to convince the Senate. The decision was therefore taken unanimously by the parliamentarians, this Thursday, to bring the case to justice. “We do not lie before a senatorial commission of inquiry, it is a solemn moment. It must be an example for those who will come to testify in the future”, commented the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, after the session. Professor Aubier risks for this false testimony up to 5 years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros.