Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17726

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Publication type: Electronic Source

Silverman E
Mexico May Fine More Drugmakers For Collusion
Pharmalot 2010 May 4
http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/05/mexico-may-fine-more-drugmakers-for-collusion/

Full text:

Mexico’s top antitrust regulator may launch new investigations into drugmakers for scheming to inflate prices. You may recall that, in February, the Federal Commission Competition fined Lilly and three others for taking turns placing winning bids in government tenders to buy insulin from 2003 to 2006, eliminating competition and ensuring artificially high prices (background and the FCC statement).
“We’re continuing to look into doing more investigations,” Eduardo Perez Motta, head of Mexico’s Federal Competition Commission told the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit in Mexico City. “There could be more (fines). I can’t give more details about them, but there could be more.”
The Mexican units of Baxter International and Fresenius Kabi were also fined for colluding to boost prices in government tenders for intravenous solutions. The $1.7 million fines were the maximum allowed when the incidents occurred, although Perez Motta says future fines could be much higher if antitrust reforms are approved by Mexico’s senate later this year.
Last week, Mexico’s lower house of Congress approved a bill that would allow fines of up to 10 percent of a company’s annual revenue in Mexico if the company has been found to be violating competition laws.”The sanctions, in the case of these businesses, are small sanctions because the law doesn’t permit us to impose bigger sanctions,” Perez Motta says. “If we are able to apply the law that is in the process of being debated in the Senate, these sanctions could be much bigger than they are now.”