Whistleblowers: Company at heart of 97,000% drug price hike bribed doctors to boost sales

Two whistleblowers at a pharmaceutical company responsible for one of the largest drug price increases in US history said the company bribed doctors and their staffs to increase sales, according to newly unsealed documents in federal court.

The effort, the whistleblowers said in a lawsuit against the company, was part of an intentional "multi-tiered strategy" by Questcor Pharmaceuticals, now Mallinckrodt, to boost sales of H.P. Acthar Gel, cheating the government out of millions of dollars.

The price of the drug, best known for treating a rare infant seizure disorder, has increased almost 97,000%, from $40 a vial in 2000 to nearly $39,000 today. read more »

An epidemic fomented in board rooms

In a sweeping lawsuit filed against the opioid industry last month. The legal action singled out Saige Earley as the face of “real people” devastated by the worst drug epidemic in American history.

A New York lawsuit drew a clear line between the dentist prescribing Saige Earley opioids after he removed her wisdom teeth in the spring of 2017 and the heroin overdose that claimed her life 18 months later. But her reality was messier, and in its own way a deeper indictment of the lengths the drug industry went to blame Saige and other victims of the epidemic for their deaths.

Topping a long list of accused in the New York action is Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and those members of the Sackler family who owned and ran the company.

The lawsuit reveals an email written by Dr Richard Sackler, Purdue’s head of marketing who ramped up sales of OxyContin by downplaying the risks of addiction from its high dose of narcotic. As overdoses and deaths escalated, Sackler painted the victims as criminals to blame for their own condition. read more »

Supervisors ignored Russian warnings over money laundering at Danske

Russia’s Central Bank sent warnings in 2007 and 2013 to Estonian and Danish financial supervisors over suspect transactions worth billion of dollars at the Estonian branch of Danske Bank but they were largely ignored, a confidential EU document shows.

The EU paper, seen by Reuters, is the outcome of an investigation by the European Banking Authority (EBA) and details for the first time the extent of supervisory shortcomings in the two countries over the Danske case. read more »