Novartis sacks 18 for fabricating sales data

MUMBAI: The Indian subsidiary of Swiss drug maker Novartis has dismissed some 18 middle-level sales executives for fabricating and inflating the sales numbers of its diabetes drug Galvus, a news report said.

Novartis sales representatives used the sales incentive provided to them by the company to buy stocks from wholesalers and show a spike in the sales of the drug in order to meet their targets, a report in business wire magazine PharmaAsia News said. Novartis India head Ranjit Shahani said the company has initiated an investigation into the matter but did not confirm firing of any employee.

“Novartis has a strong code of conduct and marketing practices guideline with zero tolerance for deviations,” Shahani said in an email response to ET query. “In the instance you mentioned, the investigation is currently ongoing, and, as a policy, we do not comment on investigations which are in progress. It would be, therefore, be premature to state what remedial action is being taken,” he added.

The PharmaAsia News said Galvus executives are being investigated for allegedly padding invoices and then buying stocks of the drug from wholesalers with cash rewards that had been doled out as incentives.