Pfizer China faces bribery allegations
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E-mail china.org.cn, August 16, 2012
A lawyer in Beijing has made a request to China's top prosecution body to investigate Pfizer China for possible bribery practices, after the US Securities and Exchange Commission accused the pharmaceutical giant of offering bribes in European and Asian countries.
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Pfizer [file photo] |
Hao Junbo, a lawyer at the Lehman Law Firm in Beijing, said on Wednesday that he submitted a letter and an e-mail to the Supreme People’s Procuratorate on Friday asking it to look into the case.
The New York-based pharmaceutical company was accused of offering bribes to doctors and officials in European and Asian countries to obtain regulatory and formulary approvals, sales, and prescriptions for its products, the US Securities and Exchange Commission said in a news release in early August.
Pfizer China created "point programs" under which the doctors could receive gifts like reading glasses, mobile phones and tea sets based on the number of prescriptions they wrote for Pfizer products, according to the commission’s complaint.
In the case of Wyeth, a pharmaceutical company belonging to Pfizer, subsidiaries in China, Indonesia and Pakistan were found offering cash and other gifts to doctors who recommended their nutritional products, and using fake invoices to hide the improper payments, the SEC said.
Pfizer’s misconduct dated back to 2001, the SEC complaint said. Pfizer neither admitted nor denied the claims.
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