Singapore: Mr Mark Reilly, the former head of British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline, who has been at the center of the bribery and corruption investigations against the company in China will be deported back to the UK. This comes after he pleaded guilty to bribery charges and was then handed a three-year suspended prison sentence.

Over the last year, as investigations began, Mr Reilly had been barred from leaving China and accused of overseeing a 'criminal godfather' scheme to bribe doctors with money, free trips and sexual favours in a bid to boost sales of GSK drugs.

At the conclusion of the trial against the drug maker, a Changsha court in China gave Mr Reilly a three-year jail term suspended for four years, following a one-day trial in Hunan Province. However, news reports pointed out that it is unclear whether Mr Reilly, who remains a GSK employee, will have to serve out the four-year period in China before he is sent back to Britain.

Meanwhile, GSK has said that it is clarifying the sentence to ensure that Mr Reilly immediately returns to the UK. Along with him, four other senior Chinese GSK executives were also handed suspended sentences of between two and four years.