New York, .- The general prosecutors of more than 40 states have sued before the Justice 20 pharmacists, accused of inflating prices and curb competition in the market of generic drugs, reported this Saturday several of them.
The action puts in the spotlight, in particular, the Israeli company Teva, who placed at the center of a plot that would have violated the laws of competition and against monopolies.
The lawsuit was filed Friday before a Connecticut state court, whose prosecution is leading the initiative.
According to the state attorney general William Tong, the companies carried out an “organized effort to conspire and fix prices, a highly illegal violation of antitrust laws.”
In a document of more than 500 pages, prosecutors denounce that for years the twenty companies negotiated and agreed on a distribution of the generic market and agreed on the prices of many medicines.
According to the lawsuit, the result of an investigation of almost five years, “Teva and his accomplices embarked on one of the conspiracies to fix more brazen and harmful prices in the history of the United States.”
The plot affected a multitude of generic drugs, whose prices companies inflated in some cases to more than 1,000%, they say.
According to prosecutors, the agreements between the pharmaceutical companies, negotiated at the highest level, caused serious harm to consumers, public entities and taxpayers.
In addition to Teva, other large companies are accused like the German company Sandoz, which is a subsidiary of Novartis, or the American company Taro Pharmaceutical Industries.
Among the plaintiffs are a large majority of the US states, as well as Puerto Rico. (EFEUSA)
