ABD hükümeti geçen cuma günü Novartis hakkında 4 günde 2. rüşvet davasının açıldığını açıkladı. İddiaya göre NOVARTIS ilacını kullandırtmak için milyonlarca dolar rüşvet vermiş. Konuşmacılara verdiği binlerce dolar yanında ilacını yazanlara NOBU restoranda (http://www.noburestaurants.com) kişi başı 3.300 dolar ödenen yemek vermiş. Sevgililer gününde Des Moines, Iowada bir restoranda 3 kişiye 3127 dolarlık yemek verilmiş.
Novartis 38.000 konuşmacı için 65 milyon dolar harcamış. Japon NOBU restoran yanında doktorlar kişi başı 2000-3000 dolar tutan restoranlara kız arkadaşları ile beraber davet edilmişler. Konuşmacılara genellikle 750-1500 dolar ödenirken Floridalı bir doktora konuşması için 3750 dolar ödenmiş.
Bu konuda Amerikanın önde gelen gazetelerinde şıkan yazılar aşağıdadır.
New York Times: 26 Nisan 2013
U.S. Sues Novartis Again, Accusing It of Kickbacks
By REUTERS
The United States government on Friday announced its second civil fraud lawsuit against the Swiss drug maker Novartis in four days, accusing a unit of the company of paying multimillion-dollar kickbacks to doctors in exchange for prescribing its drugs.
The authorities said that for a decade, the company lavished healthy speaking fees and “opulent” meals, including a nearly $10,000 dinner for three at the restaurant Nobu, to induce doctors to prescribe its drugs.
They said this led to the Medicare and Medicaid programs’ paying millions of dollars in reimbursements based on kickback-tainted claims for medication like the hypertension drugs Lotrel and Valturna and the diabetes drug Starlix.
The charges are described in a whistle-blower lawsuit first filed against Novartis Pharmaceuticals by a former sales representative in January 2011 and which the federal government has now joined.
Twenty-seven states, the District of Columbia and Chicago and New York are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which seeks triple damages under the federal False Claims Act.
“Novartis corrupted the prescription drug dispensing process,” Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement. “For its investment, Novartis reaped dramatically increased profits on these drugs, and Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health care programs were left holding the bag.”
On Tuesday, the government accused Novartis of inducing pharmacies to switch thousands of kidney transplant patients to its immunosuppressant drug Myfortic in exchange for kickbacks disguised as rebates and discounts.
Julie Masow, a Novartis spokeswoman, said the company disputed the claims in both lawsuits and would defend itself. Ms. Masow said speaker programs were “promotional programs” meant to inform physicians how to use the company’s medicines.
Novartis “invests significant time and resources to help ensure these programs are conducted in an ethical and responsible manner,” she said.
Washington Post: 26 Nisan 2013
U.S. files second lawsuit against Novartis over charges of kickbacks
By Jonathan Stempel, Published: April 26
NEW YORK — The U.S. government on Friday announced its second civil fraud lawsuit against Novartis in four days, accusing a unit of the Swiss drugmaker of paying multimillion-dollar kickbacks to doctors in exchange for prescribing its drugs.
Authorities said the Basel-based company for a decade lavished healthy speaking fees and “opulent” meals, including a nearly $10,000 dinner for three at the Japanese restaurant Nobu to induce doctors to prescribe its drugs.
They said this led to the Medicare and Medicaid programs paying millions of dollars in reimbursements based on kickback-tainted claims for medication such as hypertension drugs Lotrel and Valturna and the diabetes drug Starlix.
The charges are detailed in a whistleblower lawsuit first filed against Novartis Pharmaceuticals by a former sales representative in January 2011 and which the U.S. government has now joined.
Twenty-seven states, the District of Columbia and the cities of New York and Chicago are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which seeks triple damages under the federal False Claims Act.
“Novartis corrupted the prescription drug dispensing process,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said in a statement. “For its investment, Novartis reaped dramatically increased profits on these drugs, and Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal healthcare programs were left holding the bag.”
On Tuesday, the government accused Novartis of inducing pharmacies to switch thousands of kidney transplant patients to its immunosuppressant drug Myfortic in exchange for kickbacks disguised as rebates and discounts.
Novartis spokeswoman Julie Masow said the company disputes the claims in both lawsuits and will defend itself. She also said physician speaker programs are “an accepted and customary practice” in the industry.
People who file whistleblower lawsuits, sometimes known as “qui tam” lawsuits, on behalf of the government under the False Claims Act share in recovered damages. The United States does not participate in all such lawsuits but often joins cases it believes have greater merit.
The original lawsuit against East Hanover, N.J.-based Novartis Pharmaceuticals was filed by Oswald Bilotta, who now lives in North Carolina. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We believe that Novartis’ alleged payment of kickbacks is yet another example of abuse in the pharmaceutical industry that contributes to skyrocketing medical costs,” James Miller, a partner at Shepherd, Finkelman, Miller and Shah in Chester, Conn., representing Bilotta, said in a statement.
According to the complaint, from January 2002 to November 2011, Novartis often paid doctors to speak about its drugs and programs that were supposed to have educational purposes, but which in reality were often social occasions or not held at all.
Authorities said that for Lotrel, Valturna and Starlix alone, the company spent nearly $65 million and conducted more than 38,000 speaker programs in the decade.
The complaint describes a variety of alleged improper programs, including seven at Hooters restaurants that Novartis sales representatives attended, and pricey meals to which Novartis allegedly treated doctors.
Among these meals were dinners at high-end Chicago restaurants such as Japonais and L20, a $2,016 dinner for three at Smith & Wollensky in Washington and the $9,750 dinner for three at Nobu in Dallas in December 2005.
Masow, the Novartis spokeswoman, said speaker programs are “promotional programs” designed to inform physicians how to use the company’s medicines.
Novartis “invests significant time and resources to help ensure these programs are conducted in an ethical and responsible manner,” she said. “We are dedicated to doing it right.”
Bilotta filed his lawsuit four months after Novartis in September 2010 agreed to pay $422.5 million to resolve criminal and civil liability over its marketing of several drugs, including the epilepsy drug Trileptal.
The Wall Street Journal: 26 Nisan 2013
U.S. Accuses Novartis of Kickbacks
Prosecutors Allege Drug Maker Gave Physicians Lavish Dinners, Fishing Trips to Prescribe Pills
By CHAD BRAY and JEANNE WHALEN
The money, Novartis AG said, was for doctors to speak at educational programs around the U.S.
Federal prosecutors allege that many of those meetings took place at Hooters.
Federal prosecutors accused the U.S. unit of Novartis of paying kickbacks and providing lavish dinners to doctors to encourage them to prescribe their brand-name drugs to treat hypertension and other maladies.
Those alleged junkets were among many outlined in a civil-fraud lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court on Friday, in which prosecutors alleged the company's U.S. unit paid kickbacks and provided lavish dinners for doctors to encourage them to prescribe certain brand-name drugs to treat hypertension and other maladies.
The inducements, prosecutors said, included fishing trips off the Florida coast, and outings to restaurants like Nobu in Manhattan—as well as meals at Hooters around the country. Another outing allegedly was held at a salmon fishing lodge in Alaska, with the speaker receiving $750.
"It would have been virtually impossible for any presentation to be made" on a fishing boat, prosecutors said.
It was the second civil case federal prosecutors had brought in a week regarding alleged payment of kickbacks by the U.S. unit of the Swiss drug maker.
Novartis disputes the claims. In an emailed statement Friday, Novartis said it "will defend itself in this litigation" and noted that physician speaker programs are an "accepted and customary practice in the industry."
"We look forward to presenting the facts in these cases to the court," the company said.
Drug companies for years have paid doctors to speak about new drugs at meetings with other doctors. The industry says the meetings have an educational purpose only, but the payments have long been a subject of scrutiny by U.S. authorities, who allege they sometimes amount to nothing more than kickbacks to get doctors to prescribe certain drugs.
The civil lawsuit on Friday alleged Novartis spent nearly $65 million and conducted more than 38,000 speaker programs for hypertension drugs Lotrel and Valturna and diabetes drug Starlix over a nearly nine-year period ending in November 2011.
The prosecutors filed the civil-fraud lawsuit under the False Claims Act, which allows the U.S. to seek triple damages for fraud committed against the government. The alleged kickbacks to physicians for prescribing Novartis drugs allowed "false claims to be submitted to federal health-care programs," the lawsuit said.
The suit stems from an existing whistleblower case against Novartis over the same activity.
The speakers were paid an average of $750 to $1,500 per program, with some speakers earning as much as $3,000 a program, prosecutors said. In one instance, a Florida doctor was paid $3,750 for speaking to the same four doctors about a Novartis drug five times in a nine-month period, prosecutors said.
In another case, a Bronx doctor was paid $500 to speak at New York's Nobu at a 2006 dinner attended by the doctor, two friends, a friend's girlfriend and a Novartis sales representative, according to the lawsuit.
Many programs took place with fewer than three health-care professionals in attendance, and sometimes only with members of the speaker's own medical practice, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit described one dinner for three people, including the speaker, at a Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in Washington, D.C., where the bill came to $2,016, or $672 a person. At another meeting held on Valentine's Day in 2006, Novartis paid $3,127 for a meal for three people at a steakhouse and wine bar in Des Moines, Iowa.
"Few or no slides were shown," the lawsuit alleged. "Instead, Novartis simply wined and dined the doctors at high-end restaurants with astronomical costs."
Another doctor, who also attended Valturna programs three times, was paid as a speaker for another seven programs about the drug, according to the lawsuit. He allegedly was paid $1,500 each time to serve as a speaker at events at Japonais, a hip restaurant in Chicago's River North neighborhood; Mastro's Steakhouse, another high-end Chicago restaurant; and Billy Barooz, a sports bar in Champaign, Ill., with no private room and twelve 42-inch televisions, the lawsuit said. He also was paid to speak at his own office eight times, receiving a $1,000 honorarium and $1,000 for a meal attended by one other person on one occasion and $500 a piece on two occasions when he was the only attendee, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint said Novartis sales representatives were pressured to spend their quarterly budget for speaker programs.
"I am disappointed that you did not utilize your entire speaker funds again…In 2008, if your territory is not at 100% of speaker fund utilization…you will be put on a coaching plan immediately," a district manager told a Novartis sales representative in her 2007 evaluation, according to the lawsuit.
Earlier in the week, prosecutors alleged that the U.S. unit, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, paid kickbacks to encourage pharmacies to switch kidney-transplant patients from generic drugs to the company's brand-name product. The company disputed those allegations and said in a statement that it is committed to ethical business conduct and regulatory compliance in its sales and marketing practices.
Novartis has previously faced legal actions over improper marketing practices.
In 2010, the same U.S. unit of Novartis agreed to pay more than $420 million and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of a federal drug law to settle criminal and civil allegations that it illegally marketed the epilepsy drug Trileptal and paid kickbacks to doctors to prescribe its drugs.
Despite its prior troubles with improper payments to doctors, Novartis failed to adequately review its speaker program, according to the lawsuit filed Friday. Also, despite reports of abuse of the speaker programs, any sanctions leveled by the company were "generally mere slaps on the wrist," according to the lawsuit.
Write to Chad Bray at chad.bray@wsj.com and Jeanne Whalen at jeanne.whalen@wsj.com