Billionaire Dies During Penis Enlargement Surgery

A plastic surgeon has been banned from practice after his diamond-dealing billionaire client died during a botched penis enlargement operation.

Belgian-Israeli Ehdu Arye Laniado, 65, suffered a heart attack during the unusual procedure in the Saint-Honoré-Ponthieu clinic in Paris.

The extremely wealthy owner and founder of Omega Diamonds was a regular at the luxury clinic, which would stay open out of hours for his visits.

He would visit the centre two to four times a year for procedures costing tens of thousands of euros.

At the time of his death, he was having injections in his penis to make it larger.

A manslaughter probe was initially launched, but later changed to charges of failure to assist a person in danger, drug offences, and practicing medicine without a license.

Guy H, a renowned plastic surgeon and the clinic’s founder, received a 15-month suspended prison sentence from a Paris court on Wednesday.

His assistant surgeon, who was standing in for him on the night of the operation, was handed a 12-month suspended sentence.

Both doctors, in their 70s, have been permanently banned from practicing medicine and ordered to pay fines of €50,000 (£43,000) and €20,000 (£17,000), respectively.

But both were cleared of any wrongdoing in Laniado’s death.

During the investigation, it emerged that Laniado, a bodybuilding enthusiast, had been taking banned substances as well as chemicals used to help fight erectile dysfunction, but these are dangerous to the heart.

The case also brought to light the clinic’s questionable practices.

The surgeon was practicing without qualifications or registration with the Medical Council. Whilst Guy H was administering Botox without the required certificate.

A French court heard that emergency services were called at 8 pm on the night of Laniado’s death, March 2, 2019.

They were called again two hours later.

One defendant claimed the first call was made at Laniado’s insistence as he was suffering from abdominal pain. But he chose to continue with the surgery.

The injection into his penis was quickly ruled out as the cause of death, a judicial source told Le Parisien.

A source close to the case said: “It’s easy to say in hindsight that the heart attack started [at the 8 pm call], but since the patient had an ulcer, it was impossible to consider a heart problem, and emergency services wouldn’t have been called out for such a minor issue.”

An autopsy confirmed cardiac hypertrophy as the cause of the billionaire’s death.

Investigators who searched his hotel room, at the luxury five-star Plaza Athene, found the stash of performance substances Laniado had been taking. The substances were banned in France.

A judicial source said these were likely the cause of his heart attack.

Laniado’s family has not received compensation.

Laniado was also the owner of Mercury Diamond, a diamond pricing consultancy.

In 2015, he sold the world’s most expensive diamond, the Blue Moon of Josephine, to a Hong Kong billionaire and convicted felon, Joseph Lau Luen Hung.

In a statement on the Mercury Diamond website, the business wrote: “It is with great sadness that we confirm the news that our founder, Ehud Arye Laniado, passed ‎away on Saturday, March 2, 2019. He was 65 years old

“After living an exceptional life, Ehud will be brought back home to Israel as his final resting place. ‎He will be dearly missed by us all.”