Under fire for soaring prices, Lilly to sell half-price insulin

Eli Lilly is offering a half-price version of a top-selling insulin to ease the financial strain imposed on some patients, but an advocacy group says much bigger changes are needed.

The drugmaker said Monday it will introduce a version of the diabetes treatment Humalog that will be called Insulin Lispro and come with an initial price 50 percent lower than Humalog's current rate of about $275 per vial.

The average insulin price nearly tripled from 2002 through 2013, according to the American Diabetes Association. Since then, prices have continued to rise, often by 10 percent or more a year, and some patients have resorted to rationing their insulin.

Ben Wakana, president of the advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs, said in an email that the lower prices were still too high, and Lilly's move will help "only a fraction" of the patients who need it.

"Clearly, the insulin cartel is feeling pressure after years of price gouging a lifesaving drug," he wrote. read more »

Bank of America, RBS sued in U.S. over euro bond cartel

Bank of America Corp and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc have been sued by investors in the United States over their alleged roles in a conspiracy among eight banks to rig prices in the $9.4 trillion European government bond market.

According to the complaint, banks profited at investors’ expense by conspiring to widen the bid-asked spreads they quoted, thereby increasing the prices that investors paid for bonds and decreasing the prices at which they sold bonds.

The banks’ tactics were “strikingly similar” to those used in the foreign exchange market, the complaint said, where banks paid more than $10 billion in fines to settle enforcement claims in several countries. Several banks also entered guilty pleas. read more »

“State Capture”: How The Gupta Brothers Hijacked South Africa Using Bribes Instead Of Bullets

It started with black market rations and ended with “the wedding of the century.” Novelist Karan Mahajan travels to India and South Africa to understand how three small-time investors fleeced an entire country—aided by some of the world’s most respected consultants. read more »

CFTC Announces Whistleblower Award Totaling More Than $2 Million

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced a whistleblower award totaling more than $2 million to be paid to an individual whistleblower. The CFTC granted the whistleblower’s award application for both a CFTC action and a related action brought by another federal regulator. In ordering the award, the CFTC recognizes the contribution of a whistleblower in providing critical information through independent analysis of market data. read more »

The Troika Laundromat

Laundromats are complex systems for moving money that allow corrupt politicians, organized crime figures, and wealthy businessmen to secretly invest their ill-gotten millions, launder money, evade taxes, and fulfill other goals.

The main purpose of the system we’ve named the Troika Laundromat was to channel billions of dollars out of Russia. But it was much more than a money laundering system: The Laundromat allowed Russian oligarchs and politicians to secretly acquire shares in state-owned companies, to buy real estate both in Russia and abroad, to purchase luxury yachts, to hire music superstars for private parties, to pay medical bills, and much more.

To protect themselves, the wealthy people behind this system used the identities of poor people as unwitting signatories in the secretive offshore companies that ran the system. read more »

Vast Offshore Network Moved Billions With Help From Major Russian Bank

At first blush, Ruben Vardanyan and Armen Ustyan have nothing in common beyond their Armenian roots.

Vardanyan is a wealthy Russian banker who once led Troika Dialog, the country’s largest private investment bank. He’s spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos and spent tens of millions of dollars on philanthropic projects in his native Armenia. Ustyan is a seasonal construction worker who shares a chilly apartment with his wife and parents in northern Armenia when he isn’t renovating flats in Moscow.

But Ustyan’s signatures on documents he says he’s never seen draw a direct line to Troika — and to a financial Laundromat that shuffled billions of dollars through offshore companies on behalf of the bank’s clients, many of whom were members of Russia’s elite. The system enabled people to channel money out of Russia, sidestep restrictions in place at the time, hide their assets abroad, and launder money. It also supplied cash to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s friends and powerful oligarchs, and enabled criminals to mask the illicit origins of their cash. read more »

Leaders of Brazil Mining Giant Vale Step Down as Criminal Inquiry Widens

The top executives at Vale, Brazil’s largest mining company, agreed over the weekend to step aside temporarily at the request of prosecutors who are building a case of criminal negligence following a dam collapse at a Vale mining complex that left hundreds dead in January.

In a court document issued on Friday, federal and state prosecutors urged Vale to suspend its chief executive, Fábio Schvartsman, and eight other top executives, while the probe into the Jan. 23 disaster in the town of Brumadinho in Minas Gerais state continues.

The legal filing, which contends that officials at Vale ignored warning signs and had inadequate safety protocols, made the unusual request that the company bar the top officials from company facilities and force them to cease all business operations. read more »

In rare move, U.S. judge orders acquittal of Barclays currency trader

A U.S. judge on Monday acquitted a former top foreign exchange trader at Barclays Plc accused of illegally trading ahead of an $8 billion transaction for Hewlett-Packard Co, without letting the case go to a jury.

The acquittal of Robert Bogucki, who led Barclays’ foreign exchange trading desk in New York, by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco sets back federal efforts to hold senior bankers and traders criminally responsible for suspected misconduct. read more »