that a novartis employee had participated in the statistical analysis but had not disclosed his relationship with novartis but only his affiliation with osaka city university, where he was a lecturer. as a result, several japanese hospitals stopped using the drug, and media outlets ran reports on the scandal in japan. in january 2014 japan's health ministry filed a criminal complaint with the tokyo public prosecutor's office against novartis and an unspecified number of employees, for allegedly misleading consumers through advertisements that used the research to support the benefits of diovan. on 1 july 2014 the prosecutor's office announced it was formally charging the company and one of its employees. corruption in january 2018, novartis began being investigated by us and greek authorities for allegedly bribing greek public officials in the 2006-2015 period, in a scheme which included two former prime ministers, several former health ministers, many high ranking party members of the nea dimokratia and pasok ruling parties, as well as bankers. the manager of novartis' greek branch was prohibited from leaving the country. the minister's deputy described the allegations as "the biggest scandal since the creation of the greek state", which caused "annual state expenditure on medicine to explode". most of the ministers involved in the scandal have denied the allegations and sought to paint the case as "political targeting" and "fabrication" by the syriza opposition party. however, the greek judicial council ruled that the scandal was real. besides bribery that involves artificial increases in the price of several medicines, the case also involves money laundering, with suspicions of "illegal funds of more than four billion euros ($4.2 billion)" were involved. in june 2020, novartis reached settlements with the us department of justice (doj) and the us securities and exchange commission (sec) resolving all foreign corrupt practices act (fcpa) investigations into historical conduct by the company and its subsidiaries. as part of the resolutions, novartis and some of its current and former subsidiaries would pay us$233.9 million to the doj and us$112.8 million to the sec. michael cohen senate finance committee report on michael cohen's dealings with novartis entitled "white house access for sale" novartis paid $1.2 million to essential consultants, an entity owned by michael cohen, following the 2017 inauguration of donald trump. cohen was paid monthly, with each payment just under $100,000. novartis claims it paid cohen to help it understand and influence the new administration's approach to drug pricing and regulation. in july 2018, the us senate committee report "white house access for sale" revealed that novartis ag's relationship with cohen was "longer and more detailed". novartis initially stated that the relationship ceased a month after entering the us$1.2 million contract with cohen's consulting firm since the consultants were not able to provide the information the pharmaceutical company needed. later, it became clear, however, that then-ceo joseph jimenez and cohen communicated via email multiple times during 2017, which included ideas to lower drug prices to be discussed with the president. according to the report, several of the ideas appeared later in trump's drug pricing plan, released in early 2018, in which pharmaceutical companies were protected from reduced revenues. avexis data integrity having already received approval for zolgensma in may 2019, on june 28 avexis (a novartis company) voluntarily disclosed to the fda that some data previously submitted to the agency as part of the biologics license application (bla) package was inaccurate. specifically, the data manipulation related to an in vivo murine potency assay used in the early development of the product but the issue the fda and wider community has taken is that avexis was aware of the data manipulation as early as 14 march 2019, almost two months before the bla was approved. to compound the problem in early august it emerged a senior manager sold almost $1 million worth of stock immediately before the fda probe became public on august 6, but after the company had informed the fda of the problem. as of september 2019, the fda was still preparing its response to the scandal. philanthropy fight against leprosy novartis has been committed for decades to eliminate leprosy by providing free, multidrug therapy to all endemic countries since 2000.