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By By Lucy Tobin
\nEvening Standard<\/p>\n
AstraZeneca today coughed up $5.5 million (\u00a34.2 million) to settle a highly embarrassing foreign bribery probe, amid claims that the British pharma giant faked conferences and offered gifts to local doctors in Russia and China who bought its drugs.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s number two drugmaker \u2014 one of the biggest international pharma firms in China, with 45,000 staff \u2014 falsely recorded improper payments in China and Russia as bona fide business expenses, the US Securities and Exchange Commission said. Some bribery allegations go back as far as 2005, with AstraZeneca said to have made \u201cimproper payments of gifts, conference support, travel, cash and other benefits\u201d mainly to Chinese and Russian state medical workers \u201cto reward or influence\u201d their purchases of its drugs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The SEC claims AstraZeneca set up bank accounts in doctors\u2019 names, hired a \u201ccollusive travel vendor\u201d who submitted fake or inflated invoices to generate cash to funnel money, and \u201ctotally fabricated\u201d conferences to pay out speaker fees despite there being \u201cno meeting date, venue, [nor] subject\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Some employees at AstraZeneca in China also paid cash to local officials to reduce or avoid local fines, and even created written charts and schedules about predicted or actual bribe payments, the SEC said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
These were either offered to individual doctors, or to particular hospitals or medical departments, \u201cwith the expectation that the [medical staff] would increase purchases of Astra\u2019s products during the corresponding period, or favourably influence the inclusion of [Astra\u2019s] products on formulary or reimbursement drug listings,\u201d according to the SEC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
AstraZeneca, which co-operated with the probe, neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing. It said the US Justice Department has, meanwhile, closed a related foreign bribery investigation. \u201cWe are pleased to have resolution of these matters,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n