BASEL, Feb 16 (AFP) - Turkish police have arrested seven executives from the Turkish subsidiary of Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche on charges that they illegally inflated the price of a cancer drug, a company spokesman said here Wednesday.
Seven members of the Turkish company's board were arrested on Monday by police in Istanbul, confirmed Roche spokesman Daniel Piller, who denied any wrong-doing by the company.
Some of those detained have since been released, he added.
The Swiss daily Basler Zeitung reported earlier in the day that Turkish police acted following allegations that Roche directors had inflated the price of the cancer treatment.
Last year, a former employee claimed that Roche had sold the treatment to several buyers at different prices.
Roche, which made sales of 300 million euros (389.70 million dollars) in the country in 2004 and employs 700 people there, said its practices were in line with a Turkish law passed in 2003.
02/16/2005 16:34 GMT - AFP