China police: GSK head ordered bribery

Chinese authorities have accused a top GlaxoSmithKline executive ofordering employees to commit bribery, following a 10-month probe into theembattled British drugmaker, state media said on Wednesday.Police in the central Chinese city of Changsha said that Mark Reilly, GSK's formerhead of China operations, had "pressed his sales teams to bribe hospitals, doctorsand health institutions" in order to gain billions of dollars in illegal revenue, theofficial Xinhua news agency said.Reilly and two other GSK executives, Zhang Guowei and Zhao Hongyan, alsoallegedly bribed Chinese government officials in Beijing and Shanghai, Xinhua said.Changsha police have handed the case over to prosecutors, it added.A Shanghai-based GSK spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request forcomment.Last June, Chinese authorities detained four Chinese GSK executives on allegationsthat employees used nearly $500 million in bribes to boost sales.Reilly, a British national, had left China days after the detentions and investigationwere announced.But he returned within weeks in order to "help further with the investigation", GSKsaid in a statement at the time, and has reportedly been barred from leaving thecountry since.Police said that company staff had offered bribes to officials and doctors, withphysicians allegedly earning a seven to 10 percent cut from sales of GSK drugs theyprescribed, Xinhua previously reported. GSK staff were also suspected of taking kickbacks from travel agencies to organiseconferences, some of which were fake.Reilly and other GSK executives "tried every effort to cover the illegal sale practiceduring regular checks by regulatory authorities", Changsha police said, according toXinhua.China's healthcare sector is widely considered to be riddled with graft, given theopaque tendering system for drugs and doctors' low salaries.The inquiry was launched at a time when China initiated sweeping probes intoalleged malpractice by foreign firms in various sectors, and against the backdrop ofan anti-graft campaign backed by President Xi Jinping to root out official corruption.A total of 46 suspects are involved in the case, Xinhua said, and dozens of GSK'slocal employees have been arrested.Also being held are foreign fraud investigator Peter Humphrey and his wife, YuYingzeng, who were detained in Shanghai last summer on charges of illegallyobtaining personal information.Humphrey is the British founder of Shanghai-based risk advisory firm ChinaWhys,while Yu, an American citizen, worked as its general manager.The firm did work for GSK, although the connection went unmentioned by statebroadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) last summer when it paraded the duoafter their arrest and aired a televised "confession" by Humphrey.