A security guard walks past the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) company sign outside the factory in Shanghai, China, yesterday.
Beijing: China is preventing the British finance director of GlaxoSmithKline China from leaving the country as the police investigate claims the British drug giant bribed doctors with cash and sexual favours.
Steve Nechelput, who has served as GSK’s finance chief in China for a year, tried to fly out of the country three weeks ago but was told he had been banned from leaving. GSK said Nechelput, who has worked for the company for 23 years with stints in Mexico, Singapore and the US, has not been questioned, arrested or detained by the police and is free to continue working and travelling within China.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said diplomats were aware of an incident involving Nechelput and were providing consular assistance.
Nechelput, from Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, lives in Shanghai with his wife and two small children.
News of the travel ban comes after Chinese police raised concerns that Mark Reilly, the head of GSK’s Chinese operations, left the country shortly after the bribery investigation was announced on 27 June and has not returned.
Asked about Reilly’s decision to leave the country, Gao Feng, the head of China’s fraud unit, said: “You had better ask him yourself why he has left China and is not willing to return so far.” A GSK spokesman said Reilly returned to the UK for long-scheduled meetings. He declined to state if or when Reilly would return to China.
Chinese police have detained four senior GSK executives, all Chinese nationals, as part of the investigation that stretches back to 2007 and involves deals worth 3bn yuan. GSK is alleged to have played a “godfather” role at the centre of a network of more than 700 intermediaries and travel agencies used to bribe doctors and lawyers with cash and sexual favours. Gao claimed the Chinese authorities had evidence that “bribery is a core part” of GSK’s business. “In order to win the favour of GSK, some travel agencies don’t just offer money to their executives but also sexual bribes,” he added.
One of the arrested GSK executives appeared to confess to the bribery allegations on Chinese state television. Liang Hong, 49, GSK’s vice-president of operations in China, appeared on China Central Television (CCTV) on Tuesday (16JULY) from what appeared to be a detention cell.
“Having spent time reflecting over the past couple of days, I think the money we spent to run our business was too much,” Liang said. “All of these costs [of our bribery] were included in the price of the drugs. The money we spent running the business accounted for about 20%-30% of the drug price. To have contact with some government departments you need money that you cannot normally expense to the company.”
The Chinese Food and Drug Administration indicated that the probe into GSK’s activities would be extended to other drug companies..
In a statement on Tuesday, GSK said it was “concerned and disappointed” by the allegations and that any such behaviour would be in clear breach of the company’s values and standards.
Guardian News
