Novartis!
Please note these amounts reflect what the Department of Justice and other government agencies, such as the FDA and SEC, have reported in press releases and may exclude some state settlements. They DO NOT reflect settlement with private parties in civil suits or class action litigation. Some individual companies have paid more than $20 billion to resolve such litigation.
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This is something, ain't it? NOVARTIS the "winner" because paid the least in fines for doing the unethical, illegal and most likely criminal stuff while pushing their pills. Although 8 million maybe correct we have seen another source where it paid 30 million for some fraud against one of the states. Nevertheless it is correct that this, one of the biggest and smartest companies got caught the least with their fingers in pill jar.
Why is that? If one goes to Cafepharma Novartis board and reads few threads dealing with unethical/illegal beahavior of this Co one would be quite shocked to see lot of reports on this Co's misdeeds, that include anything from offlable, bribery,fake trials and so on. The latest is their "speaker" programs who are "trained" to speak at promo meetings that usually are attended by none or one or two doctors and the "speaker" still gets paid good honorarium. The reps claim it is a pay off scheme where these "speakers" as high prescribers and key specialists, get paid for higher prescribing of Novartis' drugs. Right now there are 1000 doctors being "trained" in California for this purpose. Each of these docs can "earn" $50.000.00 per year in honoraria for giving these fake talks. Most reps are disgusted for they just don't feel right paying off these docs instead of going out and doing the selling of their drugs.
One thing Novartis does very well. In fact they took it to an art form. They take a perfectly "legal" mode of promotion and doing biz and they turn it into an illegal but hard to prove mode of promotion. This example of "speaker" programe is a good one. In some other juristictions, they have used fake post marketing trials, where they "enrolled" tens of thousands of patients into this so called PMT, the patients had to pay for their own meds (this is against Novartis' own codes of conduct and trial conduct where the Co must not conduct a trial fo sake of sales or ask the patient to pay for the "trial" drug). This made these trials a vehicle for selling rather than research. So another perfect example of turning something acceptable and legal into an illegal promotional tool and yet nothing can be proven. These are just two examples of perhaps hundreds if not thousands of modes of illegal business practices that never get exposed.
Perhaps this is the reason this Co is a winner and for those who may want to see more, go to CP novartis boards. Even if 5% is true this comapny should be much higher on this list. Unbelievable but believe it.
ps; have seen it, done it first hand.
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