Big Pharma, corruption allegations. “They pay bribes even in Italy”

 NEW YORK – They paid housekeepers, doctors, commercial agents. They paid and perhaps continue to pay to be authorized for a drug, to be able to get a medicine approved, to be forced to choose one product over another. The practices of medical malpractice, as we know, are not confined to the narrow confines of Italy. But in Italy the bosses of Big Pharma may have certainly found fertile ground for which the United States administration is now finally starting to present the bill.

From Merck (North American Merck & Co, Merck Sharp & Dohme in Europe) to Bristol-Myers Squibb, from GlaxoSmithKline to AstraZeneca, the big names in the pharmaceutical industry are for once all in the investigation by the Department of Justice and the Sec , the American Consob. Objective: to find out if and how the Four Sisters of medicines anointed the governments of half the world to flood the market with their products.

The investigation is truly global. Among the countries under scrutiny are Brazil, China, Germany, Poland, Russia, even Saudi Arabia. And Italy, indeed. The contents of the blitz revealed by the "Wall Street Journal" are not known and at the moment it is not yet clear to what extent corruption has gone in the various countries. But the investigation identifies at least four types of possible violations. Bribes to government-employed doctors to push them to buy drugs. Payment to commercial agents of "commissions" to be passed on to doctors employed by governments. Bribes to clinics and hospitals to push the purchase of particular drugs. Bribes to politicians and health commissions to approve the use of drugs.

The investigation for now has no criminal aspect but the investigators do not rule out opening new files. The government moved on the basis of a 1977 law which forbids companies listed on the US Stock Exchange (hence the joint intervention of the SEC) from paying officials of other countries to do business: it is the so-called For