Apr. 3 (NBD) -- A whistleblower recently posted an article, claiming that some employees of Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis AG conducted illegal kickbacks during drug sales in China.

The Basel-based company responded that it was conducting an internal investigation while protecting the legitimate interests of the employees involved. The company would handle seriously any misconduct or violation which goes against the company's values, said the announcement.

According to the article written and made publicly by a real-name whistleblower claiming to be an employee of Novartis, some employees of the company including pharmaceutical representatives held false academic conferences in restaurants and brought invoices from the restaurants to apply for reimbursement from Novartis' accounting department. The money later was used as kickbacks to clinicians who applied Novartis' products. 

The Novartis employees paid illegal kickbacks to clinicians, for example, giving 1 or 2 yuan (0.16 or 0.32 U.S. dollars) to clinicians for each Valsartan or Valsartan and Amlodipine Tablets(I) and 20 or 40 yuan (3.18 or 6.37 U.S. dollars) for prescribe the Novartis drugs to a new patient, the article said.

It is reported that 80 percent of the academic promotion conferences were false and the unannounced inspection system existed in name only because the staff also helped the sales personnel cheat. The company didn't take any actions to prevent such misconducts.

This is not the first time Novartis was caught in the bribery scandal. 

In March 2016, BBC reported that Novartis allegedly offered bribe to medical workers to boost sales of its medicines. The company later agreed to pay more than 25 million U.S. dollars to the U.S. government to settle the civil lawsuit. In 2017, South Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety imposed a fine on Novartis for bribery. In February this year, Greek parliament decided to set up a special parliament committee to investigate Novartis' bribery allegations in the country, in which 2 former prime ministers and 8 former senior officials of Greek were involved.

Founded in 1996, Novartis focuses on three major business: new medicine, eye care products and generics drugs. In 2017, the company's global net sales volume stood at 49.109 billion U.S. dollars, up 1 percent year on year in dollar terms, with the revenue rose 4 percent to 8.629 billion U.S. dollars. The net profits reached 7.703 billion U.S. dollars, representing a year-on-year increase of 1 percent in dollar terms, which is mainly contributed by the fast growing profits of its subsidiaries.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn