PARIS - The founder of a French company at the centre of a global health scare over faulty breast implants was Friday charged with "involuntary injury", his lawyers said.
Jean-Claude Mas, 72, head of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), was arrested at his countryside villa in Six-Fours-les-Plages, in the South of France, at dawn on Thursday. He was later taken to the national police station in Marseilles.
After hours of questioning by investigators, he was released on euros 100,000 bail ( pounds 83,000) and banned from leaving France.
His lawyer, Yves Haddad, told AFP news agency: "He is not well, he is tired and he is waiting for his doctor."
Mas has been under investigation since he revealed in a police interview last year that PIP ordered employees to hide the unauthorised silicone when inspectors visited its factory.
However, Mas will not be investigated on the more serious manslaughter charge over the 2010 cancer death of a French woman with PIP implants. He is to face a separate fraud trial later this year over the manufacture of the faulty implants.
Around 40,000 British women have received PIP implants which were filled with non-medical grade silicone intended for use in mattresses.
Mas reportedly told police in October the victims were money grabbers and that he had "nothing to say" to them.
PIP closed down in March 2010 after regulators discovered it was using a non-medical grade silicone in its implants
Up to 400,000 women in 65 countries are believed to have been given the implants.
In December last year, the French government advised 30,000 women to have the faulty PIP implants removed following warnings that they were likely to rupture. However, the UK government said there was no urgent clinical need for women with the implants to have them removed.
PIP at one time was the third biggest global supplier of breast implants.
Women activists welcomed the arrest.
"It's been too long," said Murielle Ajellio, who heads an association for women with implants. Up to now, she said: "You feel like you're fighting against the wind," The Guardian reported.
Vanessa Halstead of the UK-based Justice for PIP Victims campaign group demanded tighter regulation of the cosmetic surgery industry and breast augmentation and called for women to be compensated for the trauma and distress caused by ruptured implants and having to have them replaced.
