Pfizer faces whistleblower lawsuit from former compliance manager who says he flagged possible fraud in China
After Pfizer allegedly fired a compliance manager for raising the flag on potential fraud activity in China, the former employee is hitting back.
Frank Han, the former director of global compliance analytics at Pfizer, has filed a civil complaint against the drugmaker. In the California lawsuit, Han claims he was terminated for identifying potential Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) issues within the company.
Han worked for Pfizer from May 2017 to November 2022, according to the court documents.
Back in 2021, Han says he discovered that Pfizer had spent “over ten times the amount of money” on potentially influential government officials (PIGOs) in China than the company had spent on those officials in other countries, the court documents state.
Specifically, Pfizer spent $168 million on PIGOs in China between the second quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2021, Han’s work found. That compared to $12 million in the U.S., $11 million in Canada, $7.5 million in Russia and $7.1 million in the U.K.
Even after Han brought the data to his supervisors, he claims he saw no evidence that Pfizer struck up a company investigation.
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Fraiser Kansteiner is a staff writer at Fierce Pharma. He joined the Fierce team in 2020 and covers topics such as manufacturing, COVID-19 and drug delivery. He also manages Fierce Biotech and Fierce Pharma’s LinkedIn showcase pages. Before diving into pharma reporting, Fraiser worked as a writing teaching fellow and later as a full-time writing teacher in New York City. In his spare time, Fraiser enjoys fiction writing and film. He is currently based in New Jersey and can be reached at fkansteiner@questex.com.