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A former healthcare executive who helped pay £4.5 million in bungs to Greek officials and then turned whistleblower on his bosses has been jailed for 12 months.
Robert John Dougal arranged payments that were used by a third party to bribe surgeons and doctors in Greece in return for their business, Southwark Crown Court heard.
The 44-year-old who is the former vice president of Leeds-based DePuy and marketing director of DePuy International – both of which were subsidiaries of healthcare group Johnson & Johnson – was described as the first person to enable a “serious and complex case of corporate corruption to be unlocked from his own testimony”.
Jailing him, Mr Justice Bean said: “Corruption was, in effect, a company policy pre-dating your involvement and approved by your superiors.
“There is ample evidence that this corruption was an endemic feature of the Greek healthcare system.
“I accept that it is likely to have involved the knowledge, consent and participation of individuals with senior responsibilities in the group of companies in which you worked.”
Copyright Press Association 2010
DePuy
