Greece will claim billions of euros from Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Monday as he called on parliament to investigate bribes allegedly paid to prominent politicians. "The government will not give up the claim to funds of which Novartis deprived the Greek people," Tsipras said.
"We will make use of every power afforded by national and international law to recover the money stolen from the Greek people, down to the last euro," he told his party lawmakers. Investigators believe that Novartis overcharged the Greek state for medicines in collaboration with government officials who received kickbacks, bilking taxpayers to the tune of three billion euros ($3.7 billion) between 2006 and 2015.
Overall, similar practises across the health sector are believed to have cost Greece some 23 billion euros between 2000 and 2015. Novartis on Monday said it has been cooperating with US and Greek authorities for over 14 months, whilst conducting an internal audit of its own and pledging to take action against errant staff. "We pledge to act accordingly on possible actions that do not meet our high moral standards of business," it said.
The company said it was not fully aware of the case dossier, but argued that "public debate surrounding the case includes inaccuracies and conjecture".