The Nigerian government today filed a lawsuit seeking criminal charges and $7 billion in civil damages against Pfizer for its alleged role in the deaths of numerous children who received an unapproved drug during a meningitis epidemic. A similar $2 billion lawsuit was filed last week by authorities in Kano, the country’s largest state.

The federal government contends that Pfizer concocted a scheme to offer humanitarian aid in response to the 1996 outbreak. Instead, the government alleges that the drugmaker secretly imported an untested oral version of its Trovan antibiotic and illegally carried out experiments on vulnerable children, according to the Associated Press. For its part, Pfizer denies the charges.

Pfizer’s researchers selected 200 children at an epidemic camp, however, and then gave Trovan to about half, according to the lawsuit. The other children allegedly were given dangerously low doses of a comparison drug made by Roche. Parents weren’t told about the experimental drug and some kids died as a result, while others suffered various disabling injuries.

Defendants in the federal criminal actions include former Pfizer ceo Bill Steere and six other people who worked for Pfizer in 1996. And so Nigeria isn’t merely going after a faceless corporation half a world away, the country is going after the guy who was in charge. Whether Steere would ever see the inside of a Nigerian jail is unclear. But the move should serve as a wake-up call to drugmakers that view foreign lands as nothing more than as a cheap way to test their meds.