The
Zhejiang Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce seized the
Hangzhou branch office of the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG on
the night of May 21, and the company's branch office in Beijing was searched on
the same evening.
A
spokesperson for the company, Wang Hua, confirmed on May 22 that the
administration visited the Hangzhou branch office, but denied that the Beijing
branch office was searched. He claimed that details about the surprise visit
were still unclear but that the company is willing to cooperate with the
authorities in the investigation. The administration refused to comment on the
raids.
The Chinese
government has been expanding its investigation into the pharmaceutical
industry since the exposure of bribery by UK company GlaxoSmithKline PLC in
April. The British company was accused of bribing Chinese doctors, hospitals,
and officials so as to sell more medicine, an accusation over which the company
expressed deep concern.
This kind
of scandal is nothing new for the pharmaceutical industry, however. In 2012,
the British Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency found that
Roche Holding hid 15,161 death reports on its drug Tamiflu. This March, the
company was again muddied in bribery charges in Italy, where the company and
its adversary Novartis were charged for monopolizing the drug Lucentis.
The firm,
currently one the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, was founded in
1896, it headquarters are in Basel in Switzerland. It owns the largest market
share in terms of in vitro diagnostic devices, cancer drugs, and
immunosuppressive drugs. It fares especially well in China with its cancer
drugs.
Herceptin,
the best-selling cancer drug, has been on shelves in China for over one decade.
Flu drugs such as the controversial Tamiflu are also one of the company's main
products. The Cochrane Collaboration, an international non-profit reported on
April 10 that not only is the drug unable to ease flu symptoms and stop the
virus from spreading, but it actually worsen symptoms. The company responded
saying that it fundamentally disagreed with this report.
Based on medicine
prescribed in hospitals, the China Pharmaceutical Industry Association
calculated in 2009 that the Shanghai branch of the company ranked first in
sales with 13.8 billion yuan (US$2.2 billion), its adversary Novartis ranking
second with 12.1 billion yuan (US$1.9 billion). Global sales for the firm
amounted to 455 billion Swiss francs (US$503 billion) in 2012, a growth of 2%
compared with the year 2011, and 98 billion Swiss francs (US$108 billion) in
profits, a growth of 1%.
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