The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday charged Israeli generic drug giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd with illegally fixing prices between 2013 and 2015.
Teva and several coconspirators “agreed to fix prices, rig bids and allocate customers for generic drugs,” including the popular cholesterol-regulating medicine Pravastatin, the department said in a statement.
Patients would have paid a total of US$350 million more than they should have, it said.
Photo: Reuters
Rejecting the charges, Teva said it was “deeply disappointed that the [US] government has chosen to proceed with this prosecution.”
Efforts to find a solution had made no progress as “the DOJ has shown an unwillingness to consider alternatives that would not deeply impact Teva and the stakeholders who depend on the company, including the patients who benefit from our medicines,” Teva said in a statement.
Five companies investigated in the case have already paid heavy fines to avoid prosecution.
Sandoz, a subsidiary of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG, agreed to pay US$195 million in March, and the US subsidiary of the Israeli group Taro Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd last month agreed to pay US$205.7 million.
Other companies involved include Apotex Inc, which agreed to pay a US$24.1 million fine in May, and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd, which was indicted by a grand jury last month.
Teva, which sold US$17 billion of drugs last year, was also accused earlier this month by US authorities of artificially inflating the reimbursement price for its multiple-sclerosis drug Copaxone for patients in the government-run Medicare program.
Separately, Sepehr Sarshar, the former founder and chief executive of Auspex Pharmaceuticals Inc, was on Tuesday arrested in California on insider trading charges, accused of feeding secrets that enabled friends and family to earn more than US$700,000 illegally.
Sepehr, 53, of Encinitas, California, was charged in Manhattan federal court with securities fraud, wire fraud and fraud in connection with a tender offer.
He was released on US$1 million bail after an initial appearance in San Diego federal court.
Authorities said he provided inside information in 2015 about a pending US$3.2 billion buyout offer from Teva to his friends and family so they could trade securities in Auspex.
Additional reporting by AP
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
RSS