Danone Milk Powder Named in Hospital Bribery Expose

CCTV has hit paydirt!  What could better than a milk formula scandal involving foreign companies than a milk formula scandal involving a foreign company that was also involved in bribing nurses at a Chinese hospital.

Getting something of a twofer, a TV expose revealed that an unidentified sales manager had bribed nurses in a hospital in northern China to recommend it's milk powder to new mothers.

"Every year we would co-operate with the hospital, and give them gifts of money, each year amounting to several hundred thousand yuan," the former sales manager was quoted as saying in the report.

"We would come to tacit agreements, because in Tianjin competition is now so fierce. Every (hospital) floor would be divided up between milk powder brands, and if you didn't give a suitable amount of money, then perhaps the next month they would switch brands to someone else," she said.

The total amount that was "donated" was about 300,000rmb, ranging from small payments of several hundred yuan, to 10,000rmb.  Danone HQ in Paris, and Chinese reps for the company were unavailable for comment.  The company said in July that it was co-operating with National Development and Reform Commission, cutting the price of it's baby forumla by between 5 and 20 percent.