{"id":96,"date":"2015-12-21T16:21:46","date_gmt":"2015-12-21T21:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/?p=96"},"modified":"2016-02-11T16:23:29","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T21:23:29","slug":"sanofi-whistleblower-alleges-company-attorneys-destroyed-documents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/sanofi-whistleblower-alleges-company-attorneys-destroyed-documents\/","title":{"rendered":"“Sanofi Whistleblower Alleges Company Attorneys Destroyed Documents”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sanofi Whistleblower Alleges Company Attorneys Destroyed Documents<\/strong>
\nby Mark Terry
\nBioSpace.com<\/em>
\nNovember 23, 2015 7:00:01 AM<\/p>\n

Read the full article at: http:\/\/www.biospace.com\/News\/sanofi-whistleblower-alleges-company-attorneys\/400601<\/a><\/p>\n

As a whistleblower lawsuit against Paris-based Sanofi (SNY) steams ahead, ex-paralegal Diane Ponte alleges that Sanofi lawyers destroyed documents rather than provide them in other legal cases.<\/p>\n

Ponte has accused Sanofi, among other things, of shifting $34 million in kickbacks and \u201cincentive payments\u201d to doctors and pharmacies to influence them to prescribe its diabetes drugs. Ponte claims she uncovered the kickbacks in March 2013 while reviewing nine contracts while she was working at the company\u2019s New Jersey headquarters. The nine contracts totaled $34 million.<\/p>\n

Seven of the nine contracts were with Accenture, two were with Deloitte. She alleges that these were direct incentives from Sanofi to physicians, hospitals and pharmacies to illegally influence them to prescribe Sanofi\u2019s diabetes drug over other companies\u2019 products. In addition, she alleges that Chris Viehbacher\u2019s firing in October 2014 was in part due to the allegations.<\/p>\n

Ponte\u2019s lawsuits also states that when she resisted signing off on the agreement, she was subjected to a \u201csevere and pervasive pattern of workplace retaliation.\u201d She was fired on October 29, 2014. In her complaint, Ponte says her supervisors referred to her as a \u201cditz,\u201d \u201cdingbat,\u201d \u201clunatic\u201d and \u201cscatterbrain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ponte\u2019s attorney, Rosemarie Arnold<\/a>, in October 2014, told Bloomberg Businessweek, \u201cThe acts surrounding her termination from the company were blatantly related to her whistle-blowing activity. She was a model employee before that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now Ponte has filed an affidavit in Newark, New Jersey court, stating, \u201cIn the course of my working in the Sanofi litigation department, I became personally aware of many instances in which documents were deliberately destroyed by Sanofi attorneys to avoid turning over said documents in discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Sanofi has indicated that it does not comment on pending litigation, the company last year referred to Ponte as a \u201cdisgruntled former employee who is opportunistically attacking our company,\u201d and further said her accusations of employment law violations were \u201cwithout merit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company is being a little more harsh in their wording over this most recent allegation, with Sanofi attorney John Bennet saying her claims were \u201cfalse, scandalous and unsupported by any evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, despite attempts by Sanofi\u2019s attorneys to remove that particular paragraph from the affidavit, Essex County Judge Michelle Hollar-Gregory refused.<\/p>\n

Further allegations include that Sanofi\u2019s North American general counsel, Robert DeBerardine, and another company attorney, Edward Berg, were not licensed in New Jersey to practice law during at least part of their tenure at Sanofi. This is required by state Supreme Court ruling for in-house counsel.<\/p>\n

Sanofi has also requested that Ponte or her attorneys return company documents that they possess. Sanofi\u2019s Bennett argued in court that Ponte had stolen the documents and that they were not subject to attorney-client privilege. One of Ponte\u2019s lawyers, Chris Dubin, retorted, \u201cIt\u2019s not true!\u201d referring to the theft. Rosemarie Arnold, Ponte\u2019s lead attorney, did say that many of the papers were not subject to attorney-client privilege because they had been seen by many people not in Sanofi\u2019s legal department. Judge Hollar-Gregory has overruled Sanofi\u2019s requests.<\/p>\n

At least some of those documents include an email from one of Sanofi\u2019s in-house lawyers, Berg, written on March 21, 2013. The email, which is in court records, refers to his quick review of Accenture contracts, which actually expresses concern over the contracts, saying it \u201chas almost no meaningful deliverables, is poorly constructed and incorrectly mentions Regulatory Review. \u2026 My initial overall take is that the contract violates almost every principal of financial stewardship and good business practices, with few deliverables, an outlandishly short time frame, no consideration as to the clear legal issues in these types of engagements with customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite those apparent concerns, Ponte alleges Sanofi insisted on approval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sanofi Whistleblower Alleges Company Attorneys Destroyed Documents by Mark Terry BioSpace.com November 23, 2015 7:00:01 AM Read the full article at: http:\/\/www.biospace.com\/News\/sanofi-whistleblower-alleges-company-attorneys\/400601 As a whistleblower lawsuit against Paris-based Sanofi (SNY) steams ahead, ex-paralegal Diane Ponte alleges that Sanofi lawyers destroyed documents rather than provide them in other legal cases. Ponte has accused Sanofi, among other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[46,44,45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97,"href":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions\/97"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rosemariearnoldreviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}