Six senior officials from the State Food and Drug Administration
(SFDA) have been accused
of bribery and taken into custody by the procuratorial department
in Beijing.
Xicheng District People's Procuratorate is questioning Cao
Wenzhuang, 44, director of the Department of Drug Registration, and
a number of other administration officials, the Beijing
Times reported yesterday.
The administration declined to comment on the report.
All six suspects were arrested on January 12 at an annual
conference of the national food and drug administration in a
northern suburb of the capital, the newspaper said.
It is not yet clear what sums of money are involved, as the
cases are still under investigation.
The judicial detention of the officials followed an order
delivered by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection,
which is the top watchdog of the Communist Party of China (
CPC).
Insiders say the arrests follow the detention of a private
businessman suspected of offering bribes to drug administration
officials. The businessman has not been identified as
investigations are ongoing.
This is the second time senior SFDA officials have been arrested
since Hao Heping, former director of the Department of Medical
Devices, was detained last June accused of accepting bribes.
The Xicheng District People's Procuratorate, which has finished
investigating the case against Hao, is ready to indict him.
Although there are a series of pharmaceutical enterprises
involved in Hao's case, sources say the Cao investigation could be
even more complicated.
Mismanagement in the testing and approval of new drugs has been
cited as one of the major factors that has led to skyrocketing
prices of medicines and huge profits in recent years, experts
say.
Shao Mingli, the new SFDA director, has repeatedly criticized
loopholes in the examination and approval procedures for new drugs,
according to a report in Beijing-based Caijing
Magazine, which was published Monday.
The SFDA dealt with 10,009 new drugs in 2004, while just 148
medicines were approved in the US.
Both Cao and Hao have worked as secretaries to Zheng Xiaoyu, who
retired as the head of the SFDA in May last year, the magazine
said.
In the first 11 months of 2005, China handled 258,700
medicine-related cases involving drugs worth 430 million yuan
(US$53.75 million).
Over the same period, the authorities banned 114,000 unlicensed
manufacturers, demolished 461 illegal factories, withdrew 66
operation licenses and imposed criminal penalties on 34 people,
sources at the SFDA said recently.
(China Daily February 8, 2006)