Vas Narasimhan, Novartis CEO (Patrick Straub/​EPA-EFE/​Shutterstock)

No­var­tis pays $678M for kick­back scheme as Vas Narasimhan tries to dis­tance phar­ma gi­ant from shady be­hav­ior

No­var­tis has reached an­oth­er large set­tle­ment to re­solve mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions, agree­ing to pay more than $678 mil­lion to set­tle claims that it had spent hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on lav­ish din­ners, so-called speak­ing fees and ex­pen­sive al­co­hol “that were noth­ing more than bribes” to get doc­tors to pre­scribe No­var­tis med­ica­tions.

The top-shelf al­co­hol and lav­ish meals in­clud­ed a $3,250 per per­son night at Nobu in Dal­las, a $672-per per­son din­ner at Wash­ing­ton DC’s Smith & Wol­len­sky and a $314 per per­son meal at Sushi Roku in Pasade­na, ac­cord­ing to the Jus­tice De­part­ment com­plaint. There were at least 7 trips to Hoot­ers and fish­ing trips in Alas­ka and off the Flori­da coast. Each of these events were sup­posed to be “speak­er pro­grams” where doc­tors ed­u­cat­ed oth­er doc­tors on a drug, but the DOJ al­leged many were “bo­gus” wine-and-dine events where the drug was bare­ly men­tioned, if at all.  (“No­body pre­sent­ed slides on the fish­ing trips,” the com­plaint says.)

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