(Yicai Global) April 13 -- China’s finance ministry handed 19 pharmaceutical companies, including Sanofi Beijing Pharmaceutical, fines ranging from CNY30,000 to CNY50,000 (up from USD4,581) due to accounting violations.

The group included Shandong province-based Buchang Pharmaceuticals and Jiangsu province-headquartered Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group, the Economic Information Daily reported yesterday. Some of the violations involved faking business transactions to inflate company funds and other accounting irregularities.

The verdict comes after the ministry and the National Healthcare Security Administration had inspected 77 medical companies in 2019.

With high drug prices in mind, the authorities are sending a message to drug firms that the country will tighten its supervision of sticking to accounting principles, an industry insider told the same news outlet.

Buchang Pharma had paid CNY51.2 million (USD7.8 million) in "consulting and marketing fees" to medical marketing companies but those firms returned the money to the payer's agents.

Some of Hansoh Pharma’s invoices were fake or inconsistent with the advertising fees paid in 2018, involving a sum of CNY129 million.

Sanofi's Beijing unit had paid CNY149 million for seminars or networking events in 2018. But some CNY938,200 (USD143,254) worth of those events turned out to be invented or no Sanofi representatives had been present, the authorities learned after talking with other people who were at the event or were supposed to have been there.

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi