Etienne Jornod – fraud or crime.

In the course of debates relevant to the “Against Rip-off” Swiss referendum and Case Vasella, it is  important to evaluate the role of Board Members of SMI quoted companies. Transparency of their job is very much required. Should this not be provided, then Chairman of the Board of Novartis could suddenly be paid-off with CHF 72 million or, in contrary, suddenly refused the same CHF 72 million leaving compensation. Of course, the second is possible if the first has been public and cannot be kept hidden anymore.

It is to suppose that in some situations Board Members are not motivated to execute their job in transparency. As it turns out, this is so not because of operational secrecy, but because

Manum manus lavat! 

Source: bilanz.ch

It has been already several times reported that Etienne Jornod during his long time activity at Galenica AG has created a system that allows to him to run the business practically without any control, to take any decisions, resulting that his job is paid with 40.000 Galenica shares 5 years in advance by having only 3 years Chairman Mandate. 

This is mainly because nobody at level of the Galenica Board has opposed him. 

Nobody from the Galenica Board has ever questioned yearly multi-million budget of Anemia Working Group (the AWG) which has operated under full Galenica control. The AWG money has been used to corrupt Opinion Leaders and doctors worldwide to motivate them to prescribe iron preparations manufactured by Galenica AG. 

Well manipulated structure of the AWG has been set-up in all major markets for Galenica’s products Venofer and Maltofer. Opinion Leaders and doctors have been paid directly or indirectly when their travelling and staying costs have been covered by the AWG funds, not mentioning the AWG parties and relevant trips to and from the "parties".

Similar Galenica payments to Swiss doctors have been discovered recently and this has been a matter of discussion in Swiss newspapers. It is a matter of separate publication(s) on how, during CEO time of Etienne Jornod, Government officials have been corrupted using distributing partners of Galenica AG.

The AWG funds have been channeled through even more sophisticated off-shore structures. The way it has been done allows to one to admit that the AWG funds have been divided in two parts: a part for the AWG activity itself and the rest for someone’s benefit, for example Panama based company Lambda Consulting SA.

Lambda Consulting has also been used for years to collect kickbacks from Galenica’s distributing partners distributing all over the world.

Kickback invoice for “services” of Panama based Lambda Consulting SA.

Lambda Consulting or similar to this structures have been used to misuse funds from marketing and promoting budgets of Galenica for years. 

Lambda Consulting SA and other similar structures to collect kickbacks from partners and to divert funds from Galenica budget have been under direct and strict control of people within Galenica AG close to Etienne Jornod. 

Etienne Jornod with enviable stubbornness has been refusing to investigate dubious activity of such colleagues and, even more, covered such people within the Company as well as prohibited to other employees of Galenica to find out anything about such activity. In fact, this says Etienne Jornod has been itself involved into activity which seems to be more crime than fraud. 

Should Galenica’s Board members be engaged in primarily transparent management, we trust,  Etienne Jornod activities and decisions would be much more restricted to fit rationality and ethics.