Glaxo 'paid bribes to Polish doctors'

Eleven doctors and a GSK regional manager have been charged over alleged corruption between 2010 and 2012.

If the allegations are proved, GSK may have violated both the UK Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It is illegal for companies based in either country to bribe government employees abroad.

'Financial gains'

A former sales rep for GSK in the Polish region of Lodz, Jarek Wisniewski, said: "There is a simple equation," he said. "We pay doctors, they give us prescriptions. We don't pay doctors, we don't see prescriptions for our drugs.

"We cannot go to doctors and say to them, 'I need 20 more prescriptions'. So we prepare an agreement for them to give a talk to patients, we pay £100, but we expect more than 100 prescriptions for this drug.

"It's a bribe," Mr Wisniewski said, confirming that although on paper the payments were for educational services, the doctors understood very clearly that they must produce a certain number of prescriptions in return.

"In return for the financial gains the doctors would favour the product proposed by the pharmaceutical company and they prescribed that medicine."

One doctor has already admitted guilt, been fined and given a suspended sentence. He said he accepted £100 for a single lecture he never gave, but only under pressure from a GSK drugs rep.

He told BBC Panorama: "They kept tempting, and I am just a man."

In 2012, GSK paid $3bn (£1.9bn) in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in US history after pleading guilty to promoting two drugs for unapproved uses and failing to report safety data about a diabetes drug to the Food and Drug Administration.

The Chinese Ministry of Public Security has claimed that between 2007 and 2010 GSK funnelled three billion Chinese yuan (£300m) through travel agencies.