With mander.xyz down right now, I’m not sure where to be posting this one, but I thought it might go here since pharmaceutical pricing affects supplies globally.
Excerpt:
Martin Shkreli—the ex-pharmaceutical executive infamous for illegally hiking the price of a lifesaving anti-parasitic drug by more than 4,000 percent and getting a seven-year prison sentence for the fraudulent scheme he used to do it—has been under a lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry since 2022.
However, according to the Federal Trade Commission and the attorneys general of seven states, Shkreli has “flagrantly and repeatedly” violated that ban nearly the entire time—allegedly by trading stock in dozens of drug companies and discussing the industry during livestreams on social media.
On Tuesday, the FTC and the seven states asked a federal judge to hold Shkreli in contempt for the alleged violations. The states include New York, California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—the same states that joined the FTC in suing Shkreli in 2020 over the “elaborate anticompetitive scheme” involving the anti-parasitic drug, Daraprim. The scheme raised the price from $17.50 per pill to $750 per pill virtually overnight, while blocking generic competitors from entering the market.
I’m not sure that trading stocks in pharma is the same as working in the industry.
I’m also fairly confident that commenting/making social media content is also not working in the industry.
They might have an argument if he had a board seat, or enough stocks to significantly influence a given company- or was otherwise being compensated for some service being rendered… but I sort of doubt that’s the case.
Unless his ban specifically forbids trading pharma stock and posting pharma-related stuff on social media… they don’t have a case.
From The Guardian:
It’s a very broad ban
Yes, that is very much exactly what he has been banned from, including making public statements that could influence the stock price of pharma companies.