Three to stand trial over selling diet pills that killed Shrewsbury student Eloise Parry
Two men and a woman are due to go on trial next year accused of killing a student by providing her with a potentially lethal slimming aid.
Eloise Parry, 21, from Shrewsbury, allegedly took diet pills containing the controversial drug DNP before she died at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital in Shropshire on April 12, 2015.
Albert Huynh, Bernard Rebelo and Mary Roberts are being prosecuted by Harrow Borough Council for her manslaughter.
They are also charged with supplying an "unsafe" food supplement containing DNP on the market between February 24, 2014, and February 24, 2016.
Roberts faces a further charge of money laundering by allegedly transferring £20,000 for and on behalf of Rebelo.
The three defendants appeared at the Old Bailey before Judge Wendy Joseph QC for a plea hearing.
Rebelo denied the charges against him while the other two defendants were not asked to enter pleas.
Judge Joseph set an eight week trial at the Old Bailey to start on April 30 next year as well as a further hearing on November 17.
Huynh, 32, from Northolt, north-west London, Rebelo, 30, of Beckton, east London, and Roberts, 32, of Southall, west London, were granted conditional bail.
DNP, which is also available as a powder, is not a controlled substance despite being linked to several previous deaths in the UK and overseas.
The industrial chemical, which is unfit for human consumption, was the subject of an Interpol warning notice issued to 190 countries in May.
An inquest found that Miss Parry had taken eight unlicensed tablets containing dinitrophenol (DNP), which she bought on-line.
Shropshire Coroner John Ellery, ruled that her death was accidental, and said he would be writing to the Government urging a review of the classification of DNP, which is marketed on-line as a "fat burning" pill.
