A BRITISH investigator and his American wife who were hired by UK drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline are to face trial in China charged with illegally obtaining and selling private information.
Prosecutors in Shanghai have filed charges against Peter Humphrey, 58, and Yingzeng Yu, 61. The couple's arrest last year coincided with a Chinese probe into allegations Glaxo staff had funnelled hundreds of millions of pounds through travel agencies to bribe doctors and health officials to boost sales and raise prices.
Their trial, due to take place next month, will be behind closed doors but the Foreign Office said it was pressing China to allow UK embassy staff to attend.
Mr Humphrey and his wife appear wearing orange vests on state television.
He said he found out during his investigation the bribery claims were true, and that he felt "betrayed and used" by Glaxo.
The couple are accused of obtaining information on Chinese citizens by illegally buying it from others or by following people.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article