(New York) The company founded by Martin Shkreli, which caused a sensation in 2015 by sharply increasing the price of a drug, on Tuesday signed an agreement with the American authorities providing in particular for the payment of an amount of up to 40 million dollars against dropping charges.
The deal, however, does not include Martin Shkreli himself and his trial will begin on December 14.
The group and its former leaders had been the subject since January 2020 of a complaint filed by the American competition authority (FTC) and prosecutors in several states.
They were accused of having put in place a whole strategy to maintain their monopoly on Daraprim, intended to treat toxoplasmosis, after having reduced the price of each pill from 17.50 to 750 dollars overnight.
To settle the lawsuits, the company, originally named Turing and since renamed Vyera, has undertaken not to attempt to block competition again in this product.
It has also agreed to pay $ 10 million to a compensation fund and up to an additional $ 30 million depending on the income earned from its activities.
The deal also bans another former Vyera executive, Kevin Mulleady, from working for a pharmaceutical company for seven years.
Martin Shkreli, who founded the company before handing over the reins at the end of 2015, was already sentenced in 2018 to seven years in prison for another case, of stock market fraud.
The 38-year-old is currently serving his sentence in a Pennsylvania prison and is scheduled to be released in October 2022.
Dubbed for a time “America’s most hated man,” he became the embodiment of the supposed cynicism of the pharmaceutical industry by making a specialty of buying out patents on cheap drugs and then increasing them. overwhelmingly the price.