“Profit at any cost” – Il Tempo

AstraZeneca announced late Wednesday that its president in China, Leon Wang, was arrested by Chinese authorities. Two weeks ago the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company announced that Wang was under investigation and that the company would cooperate with the authorities. Wang has worked for the company for more than ten years. Dozens of top drug sales executives in China may be involved in the country’s biggest pharmaceutical insurance fraud case in years, according to a report from Yicai. On Wednesday, however, AstraZeneca said that, to its knowledge, the insurance fraud case did not involve any AstraZeneca executives. It was previously reported that Chinese authorities had summoned AstraZeneca officials to investigate suspected medical insurance fraud by its employees and ordered the drugmaker to strengthen its marketing activities. But the company later said the ongoing investigation began three years ago and initially involved a small number of employees. The situation worsened after that and about 100 former workers were imprisoned. The study is related to the sale of the popular lung cancer drug Tagrisso. Sales of the drug have been very high in China, where lung cancer rates are high due to air pollution and smoking prevalence.

The news, which was not at all widespread in Italy, angered Marco Rizzo, the Coordinator of People’s Sovereign Democracy: “Why isn’t anyone here talking about it? The President of AstraZeneca China, Leon Wang, was arrested. They were forced to interfere with the medical reports of patients to establish more drug sales. Profit at any cost. In China they arrest people there. In Italy they protect them. “