The pharmaceutical watchdog has reprimanded Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk for failing to correctly disclose dozens of payments to the UK health sector as it sought to boost sales of its slimming drugs.
The Danish drug giant - Europe's most valuable listed company - systematically misreported, under-reported or did not disclose funding given over seven years to pharmacy firms, obesity charities, training providers, professional bodies and patient groups.
Even after admitting to errors and conducting an internal review, it failed to accurately report its spending. The company has now been formally reprimanded by the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA), which said it had brought the industry into disrepute.
Finding 48 breaches of the industry code, it said serious compliance failings - committed while Novo Nordisk was already the subject of an audit after previous breaches - "raised questions about the culture of the company and demonstrated poor governance and a lack of care".
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It said that "by failing to publicly disclose payments, inaccurately reporting and misreporting payments to healthcare organisations and patient organisations over an extended period of time", it "had brought discredit upon, and reduced confidence in, the pharmaceutical industry".
The company was not referred for further sanctions because it has already been punished for similar breaches and is subject to an ongoing audit, the PMCPA panel said.
The undisclosed payments came to light after an investigation by academics in the UK and Sweden who cross-referenced transparency disclosures by Novo Nordisk with financial statements and other records from UK healthcare organisations.
The firm had previously admitted failing to correctly disclose payments, telling the PMCPA in 2023 that it had omitted more than 500 transactions worth £7.8m to more than 150 organisations between 2020 and 2022.
It was subsequently found to be in breach of industry code by the PMCPA which said in July that there had been "fundamental governance failures".
But the investigation by researchers at Bath and Lund universities, which overlapped with the PMCPA probe, found that even after conducting an internal review and claiming to rectify the issue, Novo Nordisk failed to accurately record further payments totalling £635,000 to 30 organisations.
They submitted a 130-page complaint to the PMCPA which said in a ruling on Friday that Novo Nordisk repeatedly broke industry code over the payments, from 2015 to 2022.