Croatioan medical bribe saga continues

Health Minister Rajko Ostojic has said that the issuance of an indictment against a large number of physicians and the pharmaceutical firm Farmal reflects a very serious situation in the Croatian public healthcare.

“The issuance of the indictment means that there are suspicions and that this is a serious situation. We will see what will be proved and what will not be proved during the court proceedings, and the ministry or the (national medical) association will act accordingly,” the minister told the HRT national broadcaster on Sunday.

In the case codenamed ” Hippocrates” the Croatian anti-corruption office USKOK has indicted 364 doctors and the pharmaceutical firm Farmal for conspiracy to commit crime, bribery, abuse of office and incitement to abuse of official capacity, the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office (DORH) said on its website on Friday night. The indictment covers the largest number of the accused in the country’s judicial history.

According to the indictment, Farmal’s CEO Drazen Dedi and four other executives set up and ran a network of doctors and pharmacists across Croatia to sell the company’s products and in return gave them various gifts, including money and travel, worth between five and ten per cent of the medicines prescribed. The indictment covers the period from 2009 to October 12, 2012.

The police arrested nine suspects on November 13, 2012 as part of the Hippocrates operation, including Dedi and his closest associates, who were later remanded in 30-day investigative custody. In order to achieve their goal, the company’s executives hired 22 suspects who regularly visited doctors and pharmacists to reward them for prescribing Farmal’s products.

As for claims by an unnamed physician that doctors could not travel abroad where they attend congresses and symposiums without financial assistance of pharmaceutical companies and in the same vein, he raised the question who paid for Ostojic’s training in the USA and how come that as a gastroenterologist, Ostojic attended a symposium of psychiatrists in Cuba, Minister Ostojic refuted all those allegations.

“I have never been to Cuba. I was awarded a scholarship at an international tender of the American Gastroenterological Association as the only representative from Europe,” Ostojic said.

source: http://dalje.com/en-croatia/minister–indictment-in-hippocrates-case-reflects-serious-situation/493338

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