BEIJING — Drug maker GlaxoSmithKline was fined $492 million on Friday for bribing doctors in China, the biggest such penalty ever imposed by a Chinese court.

The court sentenced the company’s former China manager, Briton Mark Reilly, and four Chinese co-defendants to prison but postponed the sentences for two to four years, suggesting they may never be served. The court said it granted leniency because the defendants confessed.

The case, first publicized in mid-2013, highlighted the widespread use of payments to doctors and hospitals by sellers of drugs and medical equipment in a poorly funded health system that Chinese leaders have promised to improve. The fine is the largest such penalty ever imposed by a Chinese court.

While large by Chinese standards, the fine is much smaller than the $3 billion GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay the U.S. government in July 2012 for paying doctors kickbacks to prescribe several of its drugs and for having sales representatives promote popular drugs for improper uses.

Such informal payments pervade China’s dysfunctional health system. Low salaries and skimpy budgets drive doctors, nurses and administrators to make ends meet by accepting money from patients, drug suppliers and others. The Glaxo case brought the flow of illicit money to international attention, but within China the practice is common knowledge.

Many blame a system in which China’s hospitals nearly all are state-run but get too little money from Beijing.

The ruling Communist Party has promised higher health spending as part of efforts to spread more of China’s prosperity to its poor majority.


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