British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said Tuesday it takes China’s investigations into possible illegal data collection and drug imports by the group that led to the arrest of its boss in China “very seriously.”

“We take matters in China very seriously,” CEO Pascal Soriot said in a statement contained in the group’s latest earnings release.

“If requested, we will fully cooperate with the authorities. We remain committed to delivering innovative, life-changing medicines to patients in China,” he added.

Last week, the group confirmed that Leon Wang, president of AstraZeneca China, had been detained.

China is a key market for AstraZeneca, developer of a Covid-19 vaccine widely administered around the world during the coronavirus pandemic.

AstraZeneca said Tuesday that China accounted for about 12 percent of its global revenue in the third quarter. Sales in the country increased 15 percent in the July-September period.

“The company is aware of a number of individual investigations by Chinese authorities into current and former AstraZeneca employees,” the pharmaceutical giant added in the latest statement.

“To the company’s knowledge, investigations include allegations of health insurance fraud, illegal drug importation and personal information breaches.”

AstraZeneca said it “has not received any notification that it itself is under investigation.”

The investigations involved five current and former employees of the company, all with Chinese citizenship, who are being led by authorities in the southern city of Shenzhen, according to Bloomberg.

An investigation related to the company’s collection of patient data, which authorities suspect may have violated Chinese privacy laws, the financial newswire also reported, citing people with knowledge of the situation.

Another investigation was related to imports of a liver cancer drug that had not been approved in mainland China, according to Bloomberg.

AstraZeneca, headquartered in the United Kingdom, has 90,000 employees worldwide.

Global companies have faced an increasingly difficult business environment in China in recent years, industry groups say, citing a lack of transparency in data laws and prolonged employee detentions.

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