TAKEDA IN GERMAN POLICE ENQUIRY

Adding to the growing list of bribery allegations in Italy and more recently in the UK, German police have now been investigating vague allegations of bribery of federal health office officials by the German subsidiary of Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical.

The Frankfurt prosecutor's office says that the allegation is that Takeda has used bribes to influence the health office, the BGA, to approve its antiulcer agent Agopton (lansoprazole). Both the BGA and Takeda strenuously deny this claim, which has come from an anonymous source. However, the drug industry critic Ulrich Moebius, widely assumed outside Germany to be an authority on the German drug sector, had earlier raised objections against the active agent used in Agopton.

In a letter to the authorities, the anonymous source maintains that money was paid to BGA investigators to induce them to ignore objections to the drug.