In 2012, Pfizer and it subsidiaries agree to pay a total of $45 million due to a charge relating to illegal payments that had been made to officials in multiple countries with the intent of obtaining regulatory approvals and unlawfully increasing sales through bogus prescriptions and sales. Officials in Bulgaria, China, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Serbia all were offered payments in order to override certain regulatory requirements for their pharmaceutical products. These payments also were intended to encourage medical professionals to prescribe certain medications in an effort to increase the number of prescriptions given to their patients. It goes without saying that this is horribly unethical and frankly something that should have bankrupted the company or made them lose their legal rights to continue producing products. I digress. The settlement was a part of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).