Former pharmaceutical chief executive Martin Shkreli has insisted charges of securities fraud and conspiracy “are baseless and without merit”.
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Thursday afternoon, Shkreli entered a not-guilty plea and was released on a $5 million bond.
Shkreli’s arrest Thursday was for activities in the past, when he ran a hedge fund and worked at Retrophin, not for anything at Turing.
Federal officials described Shkreli’s crimes as a quasi-Ponzi scheme in which he used money from Retrophin to pay off money-losing investors in his hedge funds. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article. Earlier this fall, at HRC’s urging, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman began investigating whether Turing Pharmaceuticals may have violated antitrust laws by limiting distribution of the drug.
The charges against Shkreli, 32, center on his behavior at several ventures he founded before he founded Turing: two hedge funds, and a biopharmaceutical company that filed a lawsuit against him this summer. He will be temporarily replaced by Ron Tilles as the company searches for a permanent CEO.
Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, pilloried him for price-gouging, and he was pulled into congressional investigations into drug pricing. “Because everything we’ve done is legal”, he said.
Drug prices rose about 13 percent past year, driven in part by large increases in the price tags of older generic drugs such as Daraprim.
In October 2014, Shkreli was ousted from Retrophin.
Acting chief Tilles, who is also Turing’s chairman, vowed to make Daraprim affordable.
Martin Shkreli posted the video “Martin Shkreli Live Stream” to YouTube on December 16, 2015.
The maximum sentence for the top count is 20 years in prison.
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