In the latest settlement to come out of an ongoing enforcement focus on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations in the medical device industry, Biomet Inc. agreed March 26 to pay more than $22 million to settle Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and parallel criminal charges related to the company’s activities in Argentina, Brazil and China.
The SEC charged Biomet with violating the FCPA, alleging that its subsidiaries paid bribes to publicly employed doctors in Latin America and China between 2000 and 2008; that company executives and internal auditors failed to stop the payments after becoming aware of them as early as 2000; and that the company routinely concealed the payments though false documents. In Brazil alone, the company paid a total of $1.1 million in bribes.
