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Report on fraud a bitter pill for Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline
Pharmaceutical firms said to be worse than defense contractors
TheDay.com
December 18, 2010
Drug giants Pfizer Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline have helped catapult pharmaceutical firms ahead of defense contractors when it comes to defrauding the federal government, according to a new report by the consumer group Public Citizen.
The New York-based Pfizer, along with Glaxo, Eli Lilly & Co. and Schering-Plough, accounted for more than half of the $19.8 billion in fines imposed against pharmaceutical companies under the federal False Claims Act in the past two decades, the report said. Three-quarters of all these penalties have occurred in just the past five years, it added, indicating that companies are increasing their violations and that the government is enforcing state and federal laws more aggressively.
"Recent billion-dollar settlements with two of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, Eli Lilly and Pfizer, provide evidence of the enormous scale of this wrongdoing," an executive summary of the report said. Pfizer, which has research-and-development facilities in Groton and New London, paid $2.3 billion in fines last year for illegal marketing of the pain medication Bextra and other drugs. The penalties included a $1.2 billion criminal fine, said to be the largest in U.S. history.