Former drug executive Martin Shkreli, facing an indictment for engaging in securities fraud, replaced his legal team on Tuesday with a NY lawyer whose past clients have included former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn and rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs.
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“Notorious former pharma CEO Martin Shkreli fired off an email to the board of directors of his pharmaceutical company boasting “$1 bn here we come” after learning they were close to acquiring Daraprim, an anti-parasitic drug used to treat infections, according to a trove of newly released documents.
A lawyer for Martin Shkreli, the company’s former chief executive officer, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Documents from Valeant and Turing show they have made a practice of buying and then dramatically raising prices for low-cost drugs given to patients with life-threatening conditions such as heart disease, AIDS and cancer.
“The documents also indicate that Valeant believed PAPs could actually generate increased revenues by closing distribution channels and allowing Valeant to continue increasing prices”, the committee said.
The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is scheduled to hold a hearing on drug prices at 9 a.m. EST (1400 GMT), with Shkreli and others from the pharmaceutical industry as witnesses.
Excerpts from more than 300,000 pages of documents obtained from Turing and Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX) paint a dismal view of the industry’s standard operating procedures of employing public relations strategies geared to deflect attention from price increases.
Cummings said in a statement that the documents show “that many drug companies are lining their pockets at the expense of some of the most vulnerable families in our nation”.
“Another $7.2 million. Pow!” she wrote.
Regarding Valeant, the Democratic staff memo says the company identified revenue goals for Isuprel and Nitropress and raised the prices to reach those goals.
Turing said Tuesday in an emailed statement that it is ‘committed to ensuring that no patient will ever be denied access to Daraprim because of cost’. In a TV interview this week about his expected appearance before a congressional committee investigating the price of drugs, he said he’d like to “berate” and “insult” Congress but instead will take the Fifth Amendment.
With Shkreli mum, it was up to Turing’s Nancy Retzlaff to defend the Daraprim price rise. In 2015, the company acquired the rights of the Daraprim drug and it was widely criticized for raising its prize over 5000%.
He seemed to care about only one thing in buying the drug: getting Turing a billion dollars in revenue. Excluding Marathon (drugs), price represented about 60 percent of our growth.
Even the few allies that Turing had began turning on the company.
In a presentation explaining soaring sales from products including Isuprel and Nitropress, Valeant said it had engaged in “Aggressive Pricing through consultant recommendation”, according to the congressional memo.
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And like Turing, Valeant adopted a patient-assistance program that was used to “minimize media coverage of the pricing increase”, and assuage payers.
