Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-05-28
 |
| GlaxoSmithKline's offices in Tianjin. (File photo/Xinhua) |
A foreign
pharmaceutical firm was reportedly raided by the police this month while three
others were allegedly caught paying kickbacks.
On May 21,
the office of Swiss global healthcare company F Hoffmann-La Roche was
reportedly raided by police authorities in Hangzhou and computer drives and
documents were taken by the police for investigation, according to the
Guangzhou-based 21st Century Business Herald.
Roche said
in a statement that the company had learnt about the local police visit from
its Hangzhou office and that the details remained unclear but it would fully
cooperate with the government agency's procedure.
Roche's
Nanjing office was also reportedly being investigated by local authorities but
the company denied such rumors.
During the
same week, the Health and Family Planning Commission of Zhejiang province
issued a notice aimed at correcting the misconduct of pharmaceutical companies.
US global
pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Company, Swedish-British multinational
AstraZeneca Plc and Danish firm Novo Nordisk were allegedly found guilty of
paying kickbacks.
When the
GlaxoSmithKline bribery scandal stormed the foreign-invested pharmaceutical
sector in 2013, sales staff from Eli Lilly and Company, AstraZeneca and Novo
Nordisk were put under investigation, but the three companies said it was only
for a regular checkup.
In a report
by the paper in August last year, a former executive from Eli Lilly and Company
was cited as saying that the company had spent at least 30 million yuan (US$4.8
million) a year on bribing physicians to prescribe the company's two insulin
medications.
In July
last year, AstraZeneca, the second-largest drugmaker in the United Kingdom,
confirmed that one of its salespeople in China had been taken into custody on
suspicion of corruption.
Sun
Xiaoyun, an executive from AstraZeneca's business in China, said in a statement
that the company had not received any clear information from government
agencies in terms of the investigation, so it could not comment on the matter
for the time being.
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