Italians Link Glaxo to Illegal Doctor Gifts

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Italians Link Glaxo to Illegal Doctor Gifts

 

More bad news for GlaxoSmithKline, already the target of a campaign

by Canadian pharmacists and American seniors groups angered by the

company's attempts to stop Americans from buying its drugs at lower

prices in Canada (story).

 

Now the Italians are up in arms. The Finance Police in Veneto have

charged 72 Italian doctors and Glaxo employees with bribery and

corruption, charging that Glaxo employees showered cash, gifts and

trips on doctors to encourage them to prescribemore Glaxo products.

 

Nearly 3,000 more doctors and glaxo employees are under

investigation, The Associated Press reported. Verona's general

attorney, Antonino Condorelli, is investigating more than 13,000

hours of tapped phone calls, flopy disks and documents.

 

Italian news agencies said investigators are looking into

allegations the drug giant took doctors on junkets to Berlin, Sharm

El Sheik, Damasco and, during the running of the Grand Prix, Monte

Carlo.

 

Gifts to the doctors included computers, medical apparatus and

bottles of expensive wine, investigators said. The legal limit for

such gifts in Italy is 25 euros (US$26).

 

Glaxo's Italian medical director, Giuseppe Recchia, said he had just

learned about the investigation. But police say their investigation

indicates that the company carefully tracked the gifts to see which

ones led to increased prescriptions.

 

Those charged could be sentenced to up to five years in jail. But

Colonel Giovani Mainolfi, commander of Veneto's tax police, said

jail terms were unlikely.

 

" For this type of crime, it doesn't even make sense to ask for

imprisonment ... it is just a matter of professional ethics, "

Mainolfi was quoted as saying. " The generally-held opinion is that

these are just petty crimes, but that's the way to get used to these

bad habits. "

 

Glaxo is the world's second-largest pharamaceutical company. Its

U.S. headquarters are in Philadelphia and Research Trianble Park,

N.C.

 

http://consumeraffairs.com/news03/glaxo_italy.html