Lilly, Others, Paid Bribes to Hussein???

UPDATE:  The Indianapolis Star updated this story Here.

From the Indianapolis Star: 

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office has demanded documents from three major drug makers in connection with allegations that the companies paid bribes to secure lucrative contracts in Iraq while Saddam Hussein was in power, the companies said Sunday.

GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly – the British affiliate of the Indianapolis-based company of the same name – are all accused of violating the United Nations’ oil-for-food program.

The program was started in the mid-1990s to ease the impact on Iraqis of sanctions imposed after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Under the program, money from Iraqi oil sales was to have been used for food and medicine.

Lilly spokesman Phil Belt told The Star today that the drug maker will “fully and promptly reply” to the British request for documents about the company’s participation in the oil-for-food program.

“We’re going to be happy to explain what our participation in the program was, and we certainly wouldn’t describe it as bribery,” Belt said.

He said he didn’t have detailed information to release today about Lilly’s role in the program that existed under the former Iraqi regime.

All three companies have denied wrongdoing and said they were cooperating with the investigation.The fraud office started an inquiry after the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, detailed corruption in the oil-for-food program.His report, released in 2005, accused 2,200 companies from some 40 countries of colluding with Saddam’s regime to bilk the humanitarian program of $1.8 billion.

[Blogmeister Note:  The bold text in the above story is the way the Star printed it.  Apparently they want everyone to know what Lilly has to say on this.]