Chile: Baxter Pharmaceuticals targeted by FNE

Baxter, a pharmaceutical company, has notched another mark on its list of corruption scandals. It is now Chile, where the National Economic Prosecutor’s Office (FNE) accuses Mexico’s drugmaker Jaime Alberto Upegui of colluding with another laboratory to jointly award a tender for saline sodium chloride, one of the most commonly used medical supplies in health centers. Both laboratories agreed among themselves to submit proposals to sell above market costs.

This illegal agreement, apparently orchestrated by senior Baxter executives, affected the National Center for Supply of the National Health Services System (Cenabast) and the Concepción Regional Hospital for more than 460 million Chilean pesos (US $700,000 aprox.).

To the list of cases of international corruption of this firm is added a pending judgment in the United States for practices of unfair trade, retaining intravenous solutions to create artificial demand in the market and then increase their prices by up to three hundred percent.

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