Prosecutors said today that an unnamed pharmaceutical company ostensibly paid for 77 oncologists to attend a breast cancer congress in Bangalore, India, in March 2012.
In reality, the doctors, some accompanied by family members, vacationed in New Delhi more than 2,000 kilometres away.
The company paid 520,000 euros (USD 577,000) of which 417,000 euros (USD 463,000) were bribes, according to prosecutors.
They called the congress "a pretext, a way of hiding the vacation given to medics by the company ... To guide patients to the company's generic products."