Tighter corruption sanctions to be implemented

2009-09-07

In response to various corruption accusations pertaining to the pharmaceutical industry in the Czech Republic, the Czech Health Ministry is to strengthen sanctions against pharmaceutical companies which offer bribes to doctors, according to Czech News Agency. The relevant bill is to be presented to the Chamber of Deputies after the early October elections, according to Martin Plisek, the Czech deputy health minister, quoted by the agency. The bill stipulates that a fine which is the equivalent of half of the annual profit may be imposed on a company which regularly pays doctors to prescribe its products. If a company bribes doctors once, it will pay a fine of up to CZK 3m (around €120,000). Under the current regulations, the sanctions are much less punitive and the fines are of the order of hundreds of thousands of crowns only.
It recent months there were at least two corruption scandals in the Czech Republic. In August it was reported by Czech Television that one of the dermatologists at the St. Anne Hospital in Brno had been taking bribes from Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company, for over 15 years. The doctor had been receiving CZK 250 (€10) for each new patient to whom she prescribed the Novartis drug Lamisil, instead of the cheaper Terbinafin, which she had been ordered to prescribe by the hospital. The State Institute for Drug Control in the Czech Republic has already started to investigate the matter. Novartis has announced that if the accusations are proven, the company’s Czech branch will be penalised.
In 2008 Czech Television also reported on another corruption scandal, in which Actavis, an Icelandic pharmaceutical concern, was involved. The company covered the costs of a holiday on the Egyptian coast for a group of Czech doctors in exchange for the prescription of its medicines. In August 2009 the SUKL imposed a fine of CZK 750,000 (€30,000) on the company because of this practice. Actavis was, however, penalised for violating the law on advertising, rather than for corrupting the doctors, according to a report in Hospodarskie Noviny. The company is to appeal against the fine.