An extramarital affair has cost GVK Biosciences in India millions of dollars in lost opportunity and brought unwanted scrutiny of its testing procedures and a ban on the marketing of about 700 generic drugs tested at a facility where the affair began, according to a report in The Hindu newspaper.
The young, married male employee, who was said to be in love with a female subordinate, left the company with her in 2011, which caused the woman's parents to call the cops. As part of the police investigation, the ex-employee's emails were reviewed, which showed that he had complained to every major drug regulator in the world about GVK's testing procedures, the report said. Agencies contacted included the U.S. FDA and the World Health Organization, among others.
That led to the international agencies then inspecting the company's plant in Hyderabad and in July of this year to the ban by the EU on those 700 drugs.
GVK confirmed the emails in a statement to The Hindu and said the employee blamed the company for his affair. The company also said it had filed its own complaint against the former employee, but it is unclear what charges the company hopes to bring.
Indian officials, however, are saying the EU overreacted to the claims made by the former worker and said the case was being used as an excuse to clamp down on India's huge generic industry by regulators being pressured by big drug companies.
The case is part of "a bigger game" being played in the industry, according to G.N. Singh, drug controller-general of India, as reported by The Hindu. "I have repeatedly stated that multinational pharmaceutical companies constantly use incidents like this to bring disrepute to Indian generic drug makers," he told the newspaper.
- here's the story in The Hindu