AP

PARIS THE former head of a French company at the centre of a breast implant scandal affecting tens of thousands of women worldwide was arrested along with his former deputy on Thursday in southeast France, officials said.

Jean-Claude Mas, who founded and ran the nowdefunct implant maker Poly Implant Prothese, was detained as part of a judicial investigation in the southeastern city of Marseille into manslaughter and involuntary injuries, an official said.

A regional official said the company’s former No. 2 executive, Claude Couty, was also detained.

The arrest before dawn at a family residence in the Mediterranean resort town of Six Fours Les Plages culminates weeks of speculation about whether judicial investigators would be able to assemble enough evidence to detain Mas on legal grounds.

Mas, 72, had been believed to be residing in the home.

His defence lawyer Yves Haddad earlier this month denounced the “numerous un-truths, nonsense and aberrations” in the case, but said Mas would only speak with authorities.

So far no specific defendant has been named, but an official with knowledge of the probe said Mas was expected to face preliminary charges after appear before an investigating judge in Marseille. He was being held in resort town ahead of that anticipated transfer.

The three officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is in the hands of judicial investigators.

Investigating judge Annaick Le Goff opened the probe after a woman in the southwestern Gers region filed a lawsuit in the wake of the 2010 death from cancer of her daughter who had received a suspect implant.

Since then, a complaint by the sister of Marseille resident Edwige Ligoneches, a breast implant recipient who died in November of complications from lymphoma, has since been included in the case file — along with as many as 3,000 other complaints by other alleged victims.

Le Goff also spoke with the head of a victims’ association, Muriel Ajello, on Thursday, the regional official said.

A secretary at the Toulon office of Haddad said that the defence lawyer was with Mas during police questioning, and was not immediately available for comment.

The suspect PIP implants have been removed from the marketplace in several countries in and beyond Europe amid fears that they could rupture and leak silicone into the body.