Valentis Pharma lawyer asks Supreme Court to end bribery case
Saturday 3rd October 2026 on 14:45 in
Lithuania
A lawyer for Valentis Pharma, convicted of bribing doctors, has asked Lithuania’s Supreme Court to overturn the company’s convictions and end the case, LRT reported.
The Supreme Court confirmed to news agency ELTA that it had received the company’s appeal. The lawyer is asking the court either to overturn the first-instance and appeal court rulings against Valentis Pharma and terminate the case, or to overturn the appeal court’s ruling and send the case back for a new hearing. If the appeal is accepted, the lawyer has also requested an oral hearing.
In July, the Court of Appeal found Valentis Pharma, its executives and sales managers guilty of paying more than 70,000 euros in bribes to 81 doctors. The payments were intended to persuade doctors to recommend the company’s products for treating joints and inject them into patients.
Under the appeal court’s ruling, Valentis Pharma was ordered to pay a fine of nearly 55,000 euros. Its former executives were fined 15,000 euros and almost 17,000 euros, respectively. The company must also pay nearly 40,000 euros in unpaid taxes to the State Tax Inspectorate.
The Court of Appeal said the evidence confirmed a systematic scheme to bribe doctors to increase sales of the company’s joint-treatment products. It found no basis to treat the payments as compensation for injecting the medicines or as profit doctors made by reselling products bought from company sales managers. The court also upheld the finding that Valentis Pharma, its former executives and an accountant were guilty of fraudulent financial accounting.
The appeal court found one former sales manager guilty of bribing doctors after the lower court had acquitted her. It reduced the penalties because the criminal proceedings had taken too long, and revised some factual findings as well as decisions on confiscated property and a civil claim. Appeals in the case had been filed by convicted defendants, an acquitted person and the prosecutor; some were partly upheld and others dismissed.
The appeal court’s ruling took effect after it was issued.