Yorkshire boss jailed over health contracts corruption

Robert John Dougall, vice president of Leeds-based DePuy Inc, was the first person to let a "serious and complex case of corporate corruption to be unlocked from his own testimony", Southwark Crown Court in London heard.

The 44-year-old businessman helped arrange for corrupt payments amounting to 23 per cent of the sale price to be paid to a third party for use in bribing surgeons and doctors in Greece for their business. Dougall was also marketing director of DePuy International, which were both subsidiaries of US healthcare group Johnson & Johnson.

Jailing him yesterday, Mr Justice Bean said: "Corruption was, in effect, a company policy pre-dating your involvement and approved by your superiors."

The judge went on: "There is ample evidence that this corruption was an endemic feature of the Greek healthcare system.

"I accept that it is likely to have involved the knowledge, consent and participation of individuals with senior responsibilities in the group of companies in which you worked."

But the judge dismissed a joint suggestion by prosecutors and the defence that the 44-year-old businessman should be given a suspended sentence. The Serious Fraud Office encourages people in corruption to co-operate with their investigations in return for lighter sentences.

But the judge said: "I accept that public policy consideration. But it does not justify a suspended sentence in a case where corruption was systemic and long-term and involved several million pounds in corrupt payments."

Dougall, of Fulthorpe Grove, Wynyard, Billingham, stared straight ahead and showed no emotion as he was sent down.

The judge noted that former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that corruption was an "insidious plague" and "evil phenomenon" that was an "element in economic underperformance".

Dougall, who was convicted of conspiracy to corrupt, was given permission to appeal against sentence. The cost of a prosthetic knee in Greece was 4,400 euros (3,800), compared with a European average of 2,200 euros (1,900) and a low of 1,100 euros (970), the court heard.

From February 14, 2002, to the end of December 2005, DePuy's total sales to Greece amounted to almost 20m, with more than 4.5m being corrupt payments.

Those were paid to a third party, Nikos Karagiannis and his company Medec, and were referred to as payments for "professional education".

But in effect the money went into a "black hole" for corrupt cash incentives to doctors and surgeons and to send them on so -

called "vanity meetings", including a holiday to South Africa. Dougall, who earned 100,000 a year, told investigators he considered the payments inappropriate but felt "he did not have any choice".

Company emails revealed that various directors believed DePuy would lose more than 90 per cent of its business in Greece if it ceased the corrupt payments.

Ian Winter, QC, mitigating for Dougall, said his client was was "a true whistleblower".

Mr Winter also noted that Dougall did not benefit personally from the corrupt payments.