GLAXO se lava la cara...(y no del todo): 3 billiones de $.

Frances H. Miller, a Boston University law professor and health policy expert, said, “Although $3 billion is a very big number in terms of drug industry settlements, it’s not a very big number in relation to almost $50 billion in annual revenue for the world’s fourth-largest pharmaceutical company.”

Patrick Burns, spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, an advocacy group for whistle-blowers, said, “Who at Glaxo is going to jail as a part of this settlement? Who in management is being excluded from doing future business with the U.S. government?”

Last year, the Justice Department accused a former vice president and associate general counsel of GlaxoSmithKline, Lauren C. Stevens, of obstruction of justice and making false statements. But she was acquitted of all six charges in May by a United States District Court judge, Roger W. Titus, in Maryland, who ruled that she had been advising the company in good faith.

Mr. Burns said the health care sector accounted for more than 80 percent of the $4 billion in overpayments recovered by the government in 2010 as a result of whistle-blower lawsuits and resulting fraud investigations by federal and state agencies.

“This is a well-worn path for big pharma,” said Les Funtleyder, health care strategist with the New York brokerage firm Miller Tabak.

“I know $3 billion sounds like an astronomical number,” he added, “but when you live in the world of worst-case scenarios, like investors do, $3 billion is a welcome relief. At least you have certainty.”

Brian Bourdot, an analyst at the investment bank Barclays Capital, called the settlement an important step but also noted that GlaxoSmithKline “remains involved in other legal disputes, including alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.”

“We regard such disputes as an innate risk for large multinational pharmaceutical companies,” he wrote in a note to investors.

In a separate case last year, GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $750 million, including a $150 million criminal penalty, to resolve federal complaints about manufacturing quality at a plant in Cidra, P.R., since closed.

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