Disgraced drug chief sentenced to death

Hepeng Jia/ Beijing, China  

As China battles to root out corruption from its pharmaceutical sector, the former head of the State Food and Drug Agency (SFDA), Zheng Xiaoyu, has been sentenced to death after being found guilty of taking bribes. 

Yet despite Zheng's high-profile example, industry experts say that a more systematic approach to cleaning up China's drug business is essential for its healthy development. 

On 29 May, Beijing First People's Intermediary Court ruled that Zheng, 62, should be executed for taking bribes of 6.49 million yuan (£427,000) from eight pharmaceutical and medical equipment firms and illegally approving their products. 

The court explained in its ruling that Zheng's behaviour had destroyed the normal drug regulatory procedure, threatened people's lives, and had a major societal impact. 

Before retirement in 2005, Zheng had ruled China's SFDA since the agency's establishment in 1998. He is the only senior central government official to be sentenced to death on bribery and corruption charges in the past five years. Although other officials have recently been convicted of taking greater sums in bribes than Zheng, they were sentenced to life imprisonment or slighter penalties. Zheng said he would make an appeal. 

Qian Lieyang, a criminal defense lawyer of Beijing-based East Associates Law Firm, says that officials taking bribes of more than $12,000 can legally qualify for a death sentence. 'I think in this situation, the chance for Zheng to overturn the first instance in the second ruling is very low,' Qian told Chemistry World. 

Zheng's sentence comes after a series of medical scandals have claimed dozens of lives in China and shaken people's confidence in the country's fast-developing pharmaceutical industry.  

Last year, 11 died after being injected with drugs produced by a company in Qiqihar, in northeast China's Heilongjiang province. Separately, six people died and 80 fell ill after taking an antibiotic produced in east China's Anhui province. 

Wang Yuexing, board secretary of the Beijing Pharmaceutical Group, says that with Zheng's death penalty, SFDA officials would be more disciplined in processing new drug applications, which will benefit law-abiding firms. 

SFDA officials were unavailable for comment, but on the day of Zheng's sentence, the agency website posted the second draft of the revised Regulation on Medicine Registration, calling for public comments. In the new draft, the rules for approving new drugs have become more rigorous, and stipulates public hearing process for key issues in pharmaceutical regulation. 

Gao Jingde, a Shanghai-based fake-drug investigator, adds that more disciplinary action against local SFDA branches is needed, as fake and substandard drugs are mainly the result of negligent local SFDA officials. 'As a whole, more transparent supervision against the whole SFDA system is needed,' Gao told Chemistry World.