Teva and other pharmaceutical groups charged American patients for drugs up to ten times the market price
Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva will pay more than $225 million to the United States in exchange for the suspension of charges for inflating the price of certain drugs, the United States Department of Justice announced on Monday. This is the latest act in a legal proceeding launched in 2019. The Israeli company reacted by claiming to have put in place controls to avoid this kind of manipulation in the future, and has pledged to carry out its affairs with fairness and integrity.
In the same press release, the American ministry indicated that the Indian Glenmark had also agreed to pay 30 million dollars to put an end to similar lawsuits. Teva and Glenmark are the “sixth and seventh companies to recognize illegal price fixing”, for a total amount of $681 million in fines to date, the ministry said in a statement.
Among the five other companies that have paid heavy fines to settle the lawsuits are Sandoz, a subsidiary of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis and the American subsidiary of Israeli group Taro Pharmaceuticals, which agreed in 2020 to pay respectively 195 and 205.7 millions of dollars.
Under the terms of the agreement with the Department of Justice, “Teva will pay a fine of $225 million – the largest to date for a nationwide antitrust proceeding,” according to the text. It will also have to donate drugs to the tune of 50 million dollars to humanitarian organizations. The two companies must also divest from the production of Pravastatin, a popular cholesterol-lowering drug, “which was at the heart of their price-fixing plot”, specifies the ministry.
During the 2010s, these dozen large pharmaceutical companies charged American patients for drugs up to ten times the market price, according to prosecutors. The groups coordinated to fix prices, rig tenders or share market shares, all unfair competitive practices strictly prohibited in the United States.
2023-08-23 08:16:35
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