Chinese Company Pleads Guilty in Growth-Hormone Case

Chinese Company Pleads Guilty in Growth-Hormone Case
By DUFF WILSON
Copyright by The New York Times
October 6, 2010, 12:06 PM
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/chinese-company-pleads-guilty-in-growth-hormone-case/


GeneScience Pharmaceutical, a Chinese drug company, and its chief executive have agreed to plead guilty today to charges of illegally distributing human growth hormones in the United States, according to filings in United States District Court in Rhode Island.

The plea includes probation for the company’s founder, Lei Jin, and a promise to pay $3 million to a “Clean Competition Fund” that would support drug-free sports and to forfeit $4.5 million from the company to the government.

GeneScience, which identifies itself as China’s most profitable biopharmaceutical coompany, had distributed the growth hormone in China and around the world through the Internet.

The pleas are expected to be entered in court later this afternoon, after an agreement outlining the deal was filed last Friday. The company is expected to plead guilty to a felony, and Mr. Jin to a misdemeanor for selling the drug without United States government approval, the court filing says.

GeneScience was implicated in 2007 during “Operation Raw Deal,” the largest crackdown in United States history on international trafficking in steroids and other illicit body-building drugs. GeneScience company distributed a growth-hormone product called Jintropin.

The company is based Changchun, in northern China. Its Web site says it has six products approved in China, led by the growth hormone, and that “GenSci’s profitability has been ranked No. 1 among Chinese biopharmaceutical companies.”

GeneScience was founded in 1996 by Mr. Jin, who graduated from Beijing University in 1985 and received a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of California, San Francisco in 1994. While studying in California, Mr. Jin also worked as a research scientist at Genentech, the American biotech company and one of the world’s leading producers of human growth hormones.

Under the plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Mr. Jin is expected to receive a sentence of five years’ probation.

A government complaint says the company and Mr. Jin used e-mail aliases, offshore bank accounts and a network of drug traffickers to illegally distribute millions of dollars worth of human growth hormone in the United States. The distribution had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

The clean competition fund, to be administered by the Rhode Island Community Foundation, would support anti-doping in sports, drug screening and clinical research into long-term effects of human growth hormone, according to a court filing.

A lawyer representing GeneScience in the case did not immediately return a phone call and e-mail message.

Thomas Connell, spokesman for federal prosecutors in Providence, confirmed the plea agreement and said he did not know if Mr. Jin would appear in court.