Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11603

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Rost P.
Bristol-Myers Squibb: Second drug company to pay more than $1 billion in fines.
BrandweekNRx 2007 Sep 28
http://www.brandweeknrx.com/2007/09/bristol-myers-s.html

Notes:

Links not included here

Full text:

Schering-Plough was the first drug company to break the $1 billion barrier for fines paid to various government agencies. And now Bristol-Myers Squibb is following Schering’s lead.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and a subsidiary have agreed to pay more than $515 million to settle federal and state investigations into their drug marketing and pricing practices, U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan announced today.

Last year, on June 8, 2006, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that BMS would pay $750 million which would be distributed to compensate shareholders injured by fraudulent earnings management at Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. The distribution fund included $150 million BMS paid to settle fraud charges brought by the Commission. The fund also included $300 million BMS paid to settle a related civil class action, and $300 million paid by BMS in a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey to address the company’s criminal liability.

In total, Bristol-Myers has now paid about 1.25 billion dollars in fines and restitution. Oh, did we mention FBI recently searched their offices?

Nice going.

Download BMSPressReleaseFinal.pdf

Download SettlementAgreement—FinalSignedVersion.pdf

Here is a list of aggregated fines paid by a few drug companies to the Justice Depatment, SEC and FDA over the last few years due to marketing fraud, accounting fraud, and bad manufacturing:

Company Fines and settlements (M)
Schering-Plough 1280
Bristol Myers Squibb 1265
Takeda-Abbott 875
Serono 704
GlaxoSmithKline 563
Pfizer 514
Abbot 482
AstraZeneca 355
Bayer 271
Eli Lilly 36