Pfizer to pay $60 mn to settle US bribery charges

Pfizer Inc, the world's largest drugmaker, yesterday agreed to pay $60 million to settle US government charges of bribing doctors and other foreign officials in Europe and Asia in order to win business.

In the latest crackdown on US drugmakers for paying bribes to increase overseas sales, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that Pfizer's subsidiary Wyeth agreed to pay $45 million as settlement to resolve charges for bribing overseas doctors and other health care workers to increase sales of its drugs.

At the same time, the US Justice Department said another Pfizer subsidiary, HCP Corporation, had agreed to pay $15 million to settle similar charges.

Pfizer's subsidiaries were accused by the regulators of making illegal payments since 2011 to doctors, hospital administrators and regulators in China, Italy, Russia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and Pakistan to prescribe their drugs.

The regulators said that these subsidiaries rewarded high-prescribing doctors in China with cellphones and tea sets, Croatian physicians with cash and international trips, and showed the payments in their accounting records as legitimate expenses, such as training, freight and entertainment.

"Pfizer subsidiaries in several countries had bribery so entwined in their sales culture that they offered points and bonus programs to improperly reward foreign officials who proved to be their best customers,'' said Kara Brockmeyer, chief of SEC's foreign enforcement division.