A lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut alleges Heritage Pharmaceuticals, EpiPen-maker Mylan NV, and others conspired to manipulate U.S. drug prices. The suit was filed on behalf of the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, and at least 12 others.
Naming Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc. as the “ringleader” of the alleged conspiracy, the suit claims the prices of doxycycline hyclate, an antibiotic, and glyburide, a treatment drug for diabetics, were kept artificially high due to a scheme involving Mylan, Mayne Pharma, Aurobindo Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and Citron Pharma LLC. Federal prosecutors claim the price-fixing scheme was orchestrated by executives who have left Heritage.
The suit is part of an ongoing, two-year long antitrust investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
According to the New York Attorney General’s Office, former Heritage executives Jeffrey Glazer and Jason Malek conspired with others to avoid competition by “[entering] into numerous illegal conspiracies in order to unreasonably restrain trade, artificially inflate and manipulate prices and reduce competition.” By resorting to price-fixing, companies involved may have believed they would secure their market shares without presenting a major risk to one another. This alleged scheme, the suit argues, has caused “significant, lasting and ultimately harmful rippling effect in the United States healthcare system.”
The 20 states named as plaintiffs in the suit claim the companies were aware of the legal ramifications of their actions and took steps to hide their intent and actions as soon as the investigation was launched.
Gary Edwards on 12 Mar 10Quite a few observers, including this blogger, have been stunned and frustrated at the refusal to investigate what was almost certain accounting fraud at Lehman. Despite the bankruptcy administrator's effort to blame the gaping hole in Lehman's balance sheet on its disorderly collapse, the idea that the firm, which was by its own accounts solvent, would suddenly spring a roughly $130+ billion hole in its $660 balance sheet, is simply implausible on its face. Indeed, it was such common knowledge in the Lehman flailing about period that Lehman's accounts were sus that Hank Paulson's recent book mentions repeatedly that Lehman's valuations were phony as if it were no big deal. Well, it is folks, as a newly-released examiner's report by Anton Valukas in connection with the Lehman bankruptcy makes clear. The unraveling isn't merely implicating Fuld and his recent succession of CFOs, or its accounting firm, Ernst & Young, as might be expected. It also emerges that the NY Fed, and thus Timothy Geithner, were at a minimum massively derelict in the performance of their duties, and may well be culpable in aiding and abetting Lehman in accounting fraud and Sarbox violations. We need to demand an immediate release of the e-mails, phone records, and meeting notes from the NY Fed and key Lehman principals regarding the NY Fed's review of Lehman's solvency. If, as things appear now, Lehman was allowed by the Fed's inaction to remain in business, when the Fed should have insisted on a wind-down (and the failed Barclay's said this was not infeasible: even an orderly bankruptcy would have been preferrable, as Harvey Miller, who handled the Lehman BK filing has made clear; a good bank/bad bank structure, with a Fed backstop of the bad bank, would have been an option if the Fed's justification for inaction was systemic risk), the NY Fed at a minimum helped perpetuate a fraud on investors and counterparties. This pattern further suggests the Fed, which by its
