BELGRADE – Borojevic, one of Serbia’s most eminent doctors was a director of the Institute for Oncology and Radiology. He was due in court in few days to face charges brought by the public prosecutor that he had taken bribes from international drug companies as incentives to use their products. The electronic tag was a condition of his 500,000 euro ($660,000) bail.
On 11 January 2012, around noon, a passer-by found Borojevic hanging from a tree on a nylon rope five millimeters thick. Police found a suicide note in the mailbox of his wife, from whom he was separated. It had been sent from a local post office. “I couldn’t take it anymore,” it said.
A 51-year-old cancer specialist was one of a group of 10 Serbia-based doctors and drug company officials charged in 2010 with taking, or offering, more than 500,000 euros in bribes to persuade the medics to use specific products.
A Reuters examination of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings by the world’s top 10 drug companies has found that eight of them recently warned of potential costs related to charges of corruption in overseas markets.
The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and Britain’s new Bribery Act, which came into force last July, are both providing new impetus for the industry to clean up its act.