Teva settles with Israeli authorities over international bribery
pharmafile | January 15, 2018 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Teva, biotech, drugs, pharma, pharmaceutical
Just over a year ago, Teva closed a case with US authorities by agreeing to pay a $519 million fine for bribing officials in Mexico, Russia and Ukraine. Teva has now agreed to a pay fine in the location of its headquarters, Israel, but it will be significantly lower compared to the US’ fine, amounting to just $22.1 million.
The payment of the fine to Israeli authorities means that the case against Teva is now resolved. The company will be glad to be able to put this particularly dark part of its past away to concentrate on rebuilding the business.
It was, in fact, down to the difficulties the world’s largest generics producer is facing that Israeli authorities did not push for a higher fine.
The Justice Minister released in a statement that it had chosen to resolve the case due to its “current financial situation and efficiency measures it is undertaking”. It also mentioned the fact that taking procedures further could have impacted workers within the country.
For its part, Teva released a statement on the announcement, reading: “Today we announce that the company reached a resolution with the Israeli authorities that ends their investigation against the company. It should be noted that after the company learned of the US investigation, it has implemented a robust compliance and enforcement program with very high standards designed to protect it and its subsidiaries from future violations. All employees that had been wilfully involved in the wrongdoing are no longer employed by the company”.
The case was originally brought against Teva after it was revealed it had conspired to artificially improve sales of its products by bribing officials in Russia to secure an additional $65 million in profits. It also admitted to bribing a Ukrainian government official to gain approval for the sale of drugs in the company.
All of the payments were hidden as distributor payments and occurred in the years 2007 to 2012.
Ben Hargreaves
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