Focus on Pharma

Yesterday, Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler spoke at the National Institute on Health Care Fraud in Miami. Part of his remarks (see here) included the following:

"... in the months ahead, you can expect to see the department increasingly using the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to prosecute kickbacks and bribes paid to foreign government officials by pharmaceutical companies. As the drug companies do more and more of their business overseas where so much of the health care business is government run, we unfortunately see the opportunities for FCPA violations proliferating. In some foreign countries, nearly every aspect of the approval, manufacture, import, export, pricing, sale and marketing of a drug product may involve a “foreign official” within the meaning of the FCPA. The department will not hesitate to charge pharmaceutical companies and their senior executives under the FCPA if warranted to root out foreign bribery in the industry."

If the above "nearly every aspect" snippet sounds familiar, you have a good memory.

It is nearly verbatim what Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said during a keynote address to the 10th Annual Pharmaceutical Regulatory and Compliance Congress and Best Practices Forum last November. (See here).