Robert Dougal: De Puy executive charged with Greek healthcare bribes

Published on 09/12/2009. Closed Tags: , , .

The SFO reports that it has charged Robert Dougal, a former Vice President of Market Development of DePuy International Limited.  DePuy are a part of Johnson & Johnson (it was acquired in 1998) which has already been (partway?) through the mill in the US. 

It will be recalled that in September 2007, leading manufacturers of orthopedic implants: Biomet, Stryker, Zimmer, Smith & Nephew, and Depuy settled with the DOJ and SEC (paying penalties of $310 million) and accepted that they had paid bribes and kickbacks to US doctors who had bought their products.

In all, according to statements from the five companies, more than $200 million was been paid to doctors, clinics and university health systems across the country in 2007.  The companies admitted to no wrongdoing: they said that fees and royalties were paid to doctors who helped invent and conduct clinical trials on experimental products; others were payments for those experts who advise the manufacturers or teach others how to implant the devices, or were reimbursements for “reasonable costs.”
But the domestic US investigations were just the tip of an iceberg, and we understand that investigations continued into payments to doctors in other jurisdictions, including  Greece, Poland and Germany.

This UK summons alleges that Dougal conspired to make corrupt payments and /or gave inducements to medical professionals working in the Greek public healthcare system in relation to the supply of orthopaedic products between February 2002 and December 2005.  The case was committed to the Crown Court until 3 February 2010.

It is likely that we will have more to report about this sector soon.

A copy of the (very short) SFO press release is found here  .  The Times 2007 article is here.

0 Responses to “Robert Dougal: De Puy executive charged with Greek healthcare bribes”

Feed for this Entry
Comments are currently closed.