Dive Brief:
- Keisha Hall, former Teva fraud examiner and director of finance for Latin America, says she was fired because of her role in helping federal officials investigate Teva for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), WSJ's Ed Silverman reports.
- Hall's lawsuit claims that she became aware of corruption in the Latin American region as early as 2008, when she first arrived at Teva.
- Teva disclosed "likely" violations of the FCPA in February.
Dive Insight:
In 2012, Teva started receiving requests for information related to foreign bribery. Hall was aware of many of the purported activities that led up to the investigation, including unauthorized payments to doctors in Chile, as well as bribing doctors working for government hospitals. Hall's role involved helping to support compliance by developing forms for tracking sales and marketing in Latin America, and also developing a portal for automatically recording data. However, according to Hall, Teva managers tried to alter procedures for gathering data.
Hall claims she was subsequently told by a new manager that compliance efforts should not conflict with business goals. In 2013, the SEC and Department of Justice asked Hall to provide testimony to investigators. Then in 2014, when Hall took maternity leave and applied for a promition, she was fired. The reason: A whistleblower had said that Hall used a company laptop for personal purposes.
Hall stands by her story. But then again, so does Teva, which asserts that Hall violated company policy and was fired for that reason.