Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline announced this week that it has become the target of yet another criminal investigation, this time by the British government.

On May 27, GSK Company Secretary V.A. Whyte disclosed in a two-sentence statement that the U.K. Serious Fraud Office “has opened a formal criminal investigation into the group’s commercial practices.”

Jaclyn Jaeger is a freelance contributor to Compliance Week after working for the company for 15 years. She writes on a wide variety of topics, including ethics and compliance, risk management, legal,...