Pfizer To Pay Tens Of Millions To Settle Bribery Probe: Report

-- Pfizer Inc. will pay at least $60 million to settle allegations by the U.S. government that the drugmaker paid bribes to win overseas business, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The paper, citing "people familiar with the matter," said in an article published to its website Sunday that settlements are expected to be made public by the end of the year.

In April, health care giant Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $70 million to settle civil and criminal charges of bribing doctors in Europe and paying kickbacks to the Iraqi government to illegally obtain business. Terms of the deal included J&J putting in place a program to make sure it complies with anti-bribery laws across its businesses.

The charges were brought under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Comments

[mantra]

07:21 PM on 11/21/2011

What we have to demand is legislation that would ban corporations from passing on to consumers the cost incurred by the fines they pay. This is what they usually do by simply raising prices for their products or services. So they don't actually suffer the consequences of their actions. We have to make the decision makers in corporations pay for breaking the law. The present practice is obviously no deterrent.

[jsern]

03:37 PM on 11/21/2011

Okay I what they did wrong here.. They forgot to pay off the Gov. before paying off others.

[DrSkepsis]

01:34 PM on 11/21/2011

Face it, the government can't stand to see all their graft sent overseas.

[vippy]

12:59 PM on 11/21/2011

Briberies, payoffs, insider trading, everywhere we look there is something lawless. This is the Wild West and we are just taking it, we even still have some finding excuses for these law breakers. Obviously, the laws only apply to you and me. What has this country become?

[mom2sons]

02:39 PM on 11/21/2011

F&F. It is so disheartening. We just keep going down, down, down. The whole planet is corrupt!

[altohone]

12:58 PM on 11/21/2011

Just the other day a HuffPo writer tried to argue that multinationals creating poverty was a myth.

[CPAwADD]

11:39 AM on 11/21/2011

S.O.P!

[wfisher]

10:27 AM on 11/21/2011

As with the Banks, they pay a fine (that doesn't come out of the salary or bonus of those making decisions) say they only paid to avoid costly legal battles and boom, they got away with it. You will change the behavior of big buisness when you hold the decision makers accountable for breaking the law. Until then, it's the stockholders who will pay for those decisions and that is not a reasonable way to change behavior. Both Mitt Rommey and the Surpreme Court say they have rights like persons do, well, let's starting treating them that way in all legal matters. When they break the law, arrest them (not the whole company but those who made the decisions) and send them to trial.

[mrsmic]

12:34 PM on 11/21/2011

Fanned!!! :0)

[Mister Grumpy]

10:25 AM on 11/21/2011

What's the problem? Under GOP rules this is doing business normally.

[TruEngineHearing]

10:24 AM on 11/21/2011

The corporation didn't bribe anybody - contrary to what the Supremes declared, a corporation can't even tie a shoe, or cook an egg, or get up off the ground, much less commit bribery. A corporation is a soul-less brick; no more a human being than the period at the end of this sentence. The bribery was committed by humans - whose subservience to the 'one-percent' guarantees a perfect, unpunished crime. Money does more than talk - it screams and mumbles and demands and protects.

[Mnemesis]

01:01 PM on 11/21/2011

Corporations are considered "persons".

[olitenup]

10:10 AM on 11/21/2011

An yet, some poor soul stopped for headlight that is out, will get tossed in jail for some dope.

Want to stop that kind of corporate behavior? Cancel the gov't contract we have with them post haste.

This company makes Premarin, which comes from the urine of a pregnant horse. Once the babies are born, they remove the foals, ship them to SLAUGHTER (about 30,000 babies a year die) and re-breed the mare immediately. The mares are kept in tie stalls, with a pouch attached to their behind to catch the urine. They do not leave the stall except to be bred and to foal.

[blood1]

09:52 AM on 11/21/2011

Pfizer will settle this forwith, especially if the FCPA charges are there. They will pay any sum to avoid conviction, which would make them inelgible to contract with the gov't - think Medicare Part D, one of their largest honey-pots.

[PuSencer]

09:08 AM on 11/21/2011

i'm not a fan of big pharma, but our legal system in the US takes an extreme position on bribery. it will slap lawsuits on bribes taken between two foreign entities outside of US jurisdiction. In asia, what we call bribery, they call "doing business".
that said, i'm sure the $60 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the proceeds it garnered

[fugmo]

09:07 AM on 11/21/2011

Anybody go to jail? Didn't think so. Good thing they didn't try shoplifting an iPhone

[blabberator]

09:01 AM on 11/21/2011

... bribery must be ubiquitous in the pharma industry.

[timbo628]

08:54 AM on 11/21/2011

Is anyone going to jail? It must be great to be a CEO. You can break the law in an attempt to profit and if you get caught you pay a fine using stockholder's money. There really isn't any incentive to stop breaking the law since there is never any real penalty for the offender.