China detains five AstraZeneca staff for breaching 'data privacy', importing unlicensed drugs
AstraZeneca
Chinese police have detained five current and former employees of AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical giant, in a probe for possible breaches in data privacy and for importing unlicensed medications.
AstraZeneca is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company.
The police detained these individuals earlier this summer and targeted Chinese citizens who marketed cancer drugs for the oncology division of AstraZeneca, Bloomberg reported.
The Chinese police are probing whether the pharmaceutical company's employees were involved in importing a drug, meant to treat liver cancer, which had not been approved for distribution across mainland China.
The police in the Shenzhen region are leading the investigation and are assessing the way the company gathered patient data, and whether that may have broken China's privacy laws.
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"We are aware a small number of our employees in China are under investigation and we have no further information to share at this point," AstraZeneca said in a statement.
"We have no further information to share at this point," the statement added.
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China, is a key market for AstraZeneca, which is the developer of a Covid vaccine widely administered globally during the pandemic.
The pharmaceutical company has about 16,000 employees in China, which makes up about 13 per cent of the company's revenues.
Earlier, the firm targeted Chinese biotech firms for acquisitions and discussed strategies for growth in the country.
(With inputs from agencies)
