Romania charges 77 doctors in bribery case
BUCHAREST, Romania – Romanian prosecutors say they have charged dozens of doctors with taking bribes after a pharmaceutical company paid for vacations for them in India in exchange for promoting anti-cancer medicine to patients.
Prosecutors said Monday that an unnamed pharmaceutical company ostensibly paid for 77 oncologists to attend a breast cancer congress in Bangalore, India, in March 2012. In reality, the doctors, some accompanied by family members, vacationed in New Delhi more than 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) away.
The company paid 520,000 euros ($577,000) of which 417,000 euros ($463,000) were bribes, according to prosecutors. They called the congress “a pretext, a way of hiding the vacation given to medics by the company … to guide patients to the company’s generic products.”
The doctors haven’t been identified and haven’t issued a statement.
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