By GARDINER HARRIS AND NATASHA SINGER
At least a dozen major drug and device makers are under investigation by federal prosecutors and securities regulators in a broadening inquiry of bribery allegations as to whether the companies may have made payments to foreign doctors and health officials.
In previous investigations, federal officials have charged that many of these kinds of payments were made to encourage doctors to order their products. In the United States, doctors routinely market drugs and devices to their colleagues and other health professionals at medical conventions and small gatherings in restaurants. Such consulting arrangements are legal in the United States as long as companies avoid paying doctors directly to writeprescriptions.
But in most of the rest of the world, doctors are government employees. And even consulting arrangements that would be considered routine in the United States might violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, if the payments are out-sized or the arrangements are not disclosed to governments.
Of even greater concern to prosecutors are unusually large payments made to foreign doctors who conduct the growing number of clinical trials that drug and device makers conduct abroad, according to Kirk Ogrosky, a former top federal prosecutor who now represents drug and device makers at a Washington law firm.
