Polish prosecutors said on Monday they have extended a probe into allegations that British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) bribed doctors into promoting one of its drugs.
The company also faces a bribery probe in China and last week announced it was investigating alleged corruption by staff at its pharmaceuticals division in Iraq.
“Thirteen people, including a GSK representative and 12 doctors, have been charged in this investigation, which we opened in February 2012 and extended to June 30, 2014,” said Jacek Pakula, a spokesman for prosecutors in Lodz, Poland.
He said that the events in question date back to 2010 through 2012 and that all of the charged individuals remain free, before refusing any further comment.
However, according to a BBC report over the weekend, the company is alleged to have bribed doctors to prescribe its asthma drug in the Lodz region.
GSK confirmed in a statement released on Monday that a company “investigation found evidence of inappropriate communication in contravention of GSK policy by a single employee.”
The employee, who has since been disciplined, was participating in a Poland-based GSK program relating to respiratory disease that ran from 2010 to 2012, according to the statement.
“We agree there is a need to modernize interactions between the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare professionals to ensure patients’ interests are always put first and to eliminate even a perception of a conflict of interest,” GSK said, adding that it was continuing to investigate the matter.
Last year, GSK admitted that senior employees at its China business appeared to have breached Chinese law, after authorities alleged that employees had bribed government officials, pharmaceutical industry groups, hospitals and doctors to promote sales.
On Monday last week a spokesman for the group announced that it was “investigating allegations of improper conduct in our Iraq business.”
He said GSK was in the process of overhauling how it markets and sells products around the world, changing how it pays its sales representatives and putting an end to the practice of paying doctors to speak on its behalf.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”