Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Roche Holdings AG, maker of the Tamiflu antiviral treatment, is under investigation in South Korea over sales of the drug to private companies as the number of swine flu cases jumped.

The Korea Food and Drug Administration is analyzing computer files and other documents it confiscated from Roche’s Seoul office on Nov. 4, Ahn Man Ho, an agency spokesman, said today. Martina Rupp, a Roche spokeswoman in Basel, Switzerland, confirmed the office visit by Korean FDA officials.

The raid is part of a probe by the FDA in South Korea, where it’s against the law for non-medical professionals to make large-scale drug purchases, that found the local units of HSBC Holdings Plc and Novartis AG stocked up on Tamiflu, Ahn said. A surge in the number of swine flu cases prompted South Korea to raise its national alert to the highest level this week and implement measures such as increasing resources to hospitals.

Basel-based Roche is suspected of helping multinational companies including HSBC and Novartis buy big amounts of Tamiflu in South Korea, Ahn said by telephone from Seoul.

In May, the FDA started probing 3,853 hospitals, clinics, drugstores and companies for large Tamiflu purchases. The agency said Nov. 4 that it found HSBC and Novartis bought sufficient supplies for almost 6,000 people. Large purchases of drugs by non-medical personnel is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison, the FDA said at the time.

Criminal Investigation

The FDA has asked the Korean prosecutors’ office to start a criminal probe into the local units of HSBC and Novartis over the purchases, Ahn said.

“Anyone who needs the drug must have a prescription,” Roche’s Rupp said. “Roche is fully collaborating with the authorities.”

The daily number of new H1N1 cases in South Korea doubled to 8,857 last week from a week earlier, according to the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs. The country has had forty-eight deaths from swine flu so far, including three reported today, it said.

South Korea plans to have sufficient supplies of Tamiflu and other antiviral medicines to treat 11 million people, or 20 percent of its population, by the end of this year, the health ministry said on Nov. 3. Roche has delivered one order of Tamiflu to the Korean government and an additional contract will be fulfilled soon, Rupp said today.

Medical Contract

HSBC said on Sept. 25 that it secured enough Tamiflu for South Korean employees under guidelines set by the headquarters in London for an emergency.

The bank signed a contract with the Korea Medical Institute on Dec. 31, 2007, to get legal Tamiflu prescriptions, which it used to buy the medicine from drugstores, Jina Hwang, a spokeswoman at HSBC, said by e-mail today. HSBC has “never heard” from hospitals and drugstores that the purchase procedure was illegal, she said.

Hwang declined to comment further, citing ongoing investigations. Stacy Ha, a spokeswoman at the Korean unit of Novartis, also declined to comment.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bomi Lim in Seoul at blim30@bloomberg.net; Sangim Han in Seoul at sihan@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 6, 2009 09:22 EST