By Donato Paolo Mancini

The Swiss attorney general's office and the Basel prosecutor's office are in touch with each other over Novartis AG's (NOVN.EB) payments to Michael Cohen's company, Essential Consultants LLC, both offices confirmed separately Tuesday.

The Attorney General's office in Bern said it has taken note of media coverage regarding the payments, and that it wasn't conducting any criminal proceedings in this context, but it declined to say whether it was considering bringing charges or whether it was aware of any payments prior to news of the payments last week.

Bloomberg and the Financial Times have reported separately that the Swiss prosecutors were in contact over the payments.

Novartis CEO Vasant Narasimhan said last week that the company had "made a mistake" in agreeing to pay Mr. Cohen, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, $1.2 million for insight into health-care policy through Essential Consultants.

The same company was used by Mr. Cohen to direct $130,000 last October to a former adult-film actress, known as Stormy Daniels, to prevent her from discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump denies the sexual encounter.

Novartis said last week it entered into the one-year agreement shortly after the election of Mr. Trump and that the agreement expired in February.

Novartis has said the arrangement was entered under a different chief executive and that payments could not be interrupted because of the nature of the deal, even if it had become clear that Mr. Cohen couldn't be effective in his consultancy on health-care policy matters.

Write to Donato Paolo Mancini at donatopaolo.mancini@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 15, 2018 07:00 ET (11:00 GMT)

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