J&J fined $70 million over bribery allegations

[Dappleganger]

By Steve Goldstein

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Johnson & Johnson (JNJ 59.60, +0.12, +0.20%) on Friday agreed to pay $70 million to settle charges brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice it bribed public doctors in several European countries and paid kickbacks in Iraq. The SEC alleges that since at least 1998, subsidiaries of the company paid bribes to public doctors in Greece who selected J&J surgical implants, public doctors and hospital administrators in Poland who awarded contracts to J&J, and public doctors in Romania to prescribe J&J pharmaceutical products. J&J subsidiaries also paid kickbacks to Iraq to obtain 19 contracts under the United Nations Oil for Food Program, the SEC said. A resolution of a related investigation by the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office is anticipated.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/jj-fined-70-million-over-bribery-allegations-2011-04-08

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THIS is why one should never trust pharmaceuticals to "self-regulate." BTW, my husband used to work for this company (different division).

[gratuitous]

1. Just another cost of doing business

The price of their products will go up a dime, and Johnson & Johnson will continue on as before. Maybe if some executives went to prison for a few years, this kind of corruption would taper off? After all, we expect illegal drug use to stop by locking up about a quarter of the population of black men.

[xchrom]

3. you'd have to do both. take the money and send their asses to jail.

now mind you -- if you had committed this crime -- adimitedly on a smaller scale --
that's what would happen pronto -- jail and fine.

[Dappleganger]

4. Cost of doing business--that's precisely how they see it.

It probably has it's own funding category, "Cost of doing business". Just like Eli Lily, etc.

[Angry Dragon]

2. Until people are jailed and fined for their crimes this will continue

[Dappleganger]

5. They'll never go to jail, they're corporats.