The Financial Times reported on Thursday that the United States Department of Justice is conducting a corruption probe of several major pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Eli Lilly. Specifically, the Department of Justice is investigating whether these and other companies have violated U.S. anti-bribery laws by making payments in other countries.
The Department of Justice is particularly interested in payments that may have been used to influence the reliability or integrity of clinical drug trials conducted in other countries. This is significant because 80% of applications to the Food and Drug Administration for approval of drug marketing in the United States rely on at least one clinical drug trial conducted outside the U.S.
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