Billion Dollar Fines Are Just a Cost of Doing Business For Novartis

Novartis has a history of devious behavior when it comes to marketing dangerous and potentially deadly drugs worldwide

Tuesday, October 2, 2018 - Swiss pharmaceutical maker Novartis is at the forefront of developing cutting-edge drugs to fight deadly diseases but also knows no bounds when it comes to pushing the envelope as to what is considered legal or illegal drug marketing. Novartis has a long history of doing whatever is necessary to retain its dominance of the multi-billion drug market without regard to patient safety or what activities may or may not be legal or ethical. Novartis' modus operandi is to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines to government agencies, a small percentage of the billion they earn, as merely another cost of doing business.

Novartis AG has been accused by the US Department of Justice of collusion, over-charging for drugs, banking, and wire fraud, as well as insurance fraud. Novartis sales representatives orchestrated in illegal and unethical marketing scheme when it ran contests and otherwise incentivized specialty pharmacists to replace its flagship cancer drug Gleevec with the more potent and potentially deadly Tasigna. This was done because Gleevec's patent was set to expire opening the chemotherapy market to inexpensive generic drugs that cancer patients could buy for ten cents on the dollar compared with Gleevec. Pharmacists and sales representatives, as well as the US FDA, looked the other way and simply assumed Tasigna was as safe as Gleevec, however, it is not. Tasigna has been found to cause deadly atherosclerosis, a hardening, narrowing, and thickening of the body's major arteries leading to and from the extremities, heart, and brain. Tasigna patients have been forced to undergo coronary bypass surgery to re-route the heart's critical blood flow away from the arteries destroyed by Tasigna, now the subject of numerous Tasigna lawsuits. But Novartis illegal drug marketing is not limited to the United States. The company has a history of bending the rules on almost every continent in the world to the extent that billion-dollar fines and settlements are merely a cost of doing business to the firm.

In May of 2014, the government of Italy fined Novartis $1.2 billion Euros, accusing the drug company of "restricting competition in ophthalmic drugs," and that Novartis "colluded to keep doctors from prescribing a relatively inexpensive eye treatment in favor of a more expensive drug used to treat a common cause of blindness." (1) Just last year, in June of 2017, the South Korean Fair Trade Ministry, an agency of the government of South Korea, accused Novartis of conducting " unfair promotions... and kickbacks to doctors, and paid (Korean won) 7.6 billion to fund overseas trips by medical practitioners to attend academic conferences from 2011 to 2016." (2) Back in 1999, Novartis was fined $27 million by the government of Japan for under-reporting Japanese income. Novartis defrauded the Japanese government by engaging in a scheme that, "involves parent companies increasing charges for products or active ingredients to their subsidiaries in countries where the effective tax rate is high, and the charge in Japan is currently one of the highest in the world. "

Sources:

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/business/international/italy-seeks-1-6-billion-in-damages-from-roche-and-novartis.html

(2) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-novartis-south-korea/south-korea-to-fine-novartis-unit-over-unfair-drug-promotions-idUSKBN18Z0A9

More Recent Tasigna Atherosclerosis Lawsuit News:

No-Cost, No-Obligation Tasigna Lawsuit Case Review If You or a Loved One Suffered from Tasigna Complications

OnderLaw, LLC is a St. Louis personal injury law firm handling serious injury and death claims across the country. Its mission is the pursuit of justice, no matter how complex the case or strenuous the effort. The Onder Law Firm has represented clients throughout the United States in pharmaceutical and medical device litigation such as Pradaxa, Lexapro and Yasmin/Yaz, where the firm's attorneys held significant leadership roles in the litigation, as well as Actos, DePuy, Risperdal and others. The Onder Law Firm has won more than $300 million in four talcum powder ovarian cancer lawsuits in St. Louis. Law firms throughout the nation often seek its experience and expertise on complex litigation.