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Serono settles lawsuit alleging it paid doctors to prescribe MS drug Rebif



The Swiss drug giant Merck Serono S.A. will pay $44.3 million to the US government to settle a lawsuit that charged the company illegally funneled money to doctors to prescribe and promote their Multiple Sclerosis drug Rebif, according to the Department of Justice.

A Serono employee - a California based regional business director - blew the whistle on the company's alleged payments and filed a false claims lawsuit back in 2005, according to court documents.

Allegations in the court filings indicate the drug company paid a top prescriber of Rebif, often through a New York based Multiple Sclerosis clinic. The whistleblower claims Serono company management referred to the relationship by saying, "we have a whole money laundering thing going on," with the clinic. The complaint indicates that payments to the clinic totaled more than $300,000.... Read More - http://www.msrc.co.uk/index.cfm/fuseact ... ageid/1901

It was the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers that took almost $500,000 from Serono to "launder" the money for the pharma company, and then make kick back payments to neurologists.

Dr. Bowling of the Rocky Mountain MS Clinic repeatedly asked Amato for money, and got $50,000 which passed from Serono to the CMSC to him--

Here's the CBS investigative reporting. Nurse and executive director of the CMSC, June Halper, was named by Amato as the money launderer.

link to story

The Consortium runs NARCOM, the largest patient registry in North America...and they were not disciplined for laundering pharma money. Where is the outrage?
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