Singapore: To clean up its act in China, GSK has further fired nearly 100 employees for misconduct and violation of GSK's governance and compliance procedures, a leading Chinese daily reported. The sackings were related to the bribery scandal that took place in mid-2013 before GSK was fined with a mammoth sum of $487 mn for corruption charges.

The amount of the fine was equivalent to the amount of cash the company had been accused of funneling to doctors via travel agencies in return for prescribing its products. The court had also handed down suspended jail sentences to former GSK China head Mr Mark Reilly and other GSK executives.

GSK said in a statement that the company has introduced new governance model in China with additional controls and monitoring of local working practices and financial transactions. The drug maker also said that it had bolstered its internal bribery and corruption team to further step up efforts to avoid such occurrences in future.

The firings have triggered protests in China and many of the employees have complained to the labor court that GSK acted without sufficient evidence against the employees and that employees were not given sufficient time or compensation.