BRITISH drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, which was fined 3 billion yuan (US$479 million) in China last year for bribery, is dismissing 110 employees in the country for misconduct, people familiar with the matter said Friday.

    The company confirmed it had taken disciplinary action against staff whose conduct contravened its values and code of conduct but declined to specify the number involved. The misconduct took place before mid-2013, GSK added in a statement.

    The dismissals follow detailed investigations into wrongdoing by employees in the wake of the corruption scandal, which badly damaged the drugmaker’s reputation and hit its business in a fast-growing emerging market.

    “As we have previously said, we have increased our monitoring of expense claims and increased our compliance efforts. We also engaged an independent legal firm and external consultancies to review our operations in China,” it said. “Where evidence of misconduct has been found, we take appropriate disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment.”

    The company’s annual report, published the week before last, had already revealed that the number disciplinary cases against staff in China jumped to 652 in 2014 from 48 in 2013.

    Chinese police first accused GSK of bribery in July 2013, alleging the firm had funneled as much as 3 billion yuan to travel agencies to facilitate bribes to doctors and officials.

    The GSK case was the biggest corruption scandal to hit a foreign company in China since the Rio Tinto affair in 2009, which resulted in four executives, including an Australian, being jailed.(SD-Agencies)