I think that a lot of the time it actually does. Kind of a piss-off for the rest of us.
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ā¦nnnnot really. They mostly grilled him on his price-gouging and exploiting of sick people for profit. If youāre cool with that, well, have fun.
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āShkreli Miraculously Makes Nation Side with Congressā
āLawyer for Martin Shkreli Hikes Fees Five Thousand Per Centā
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Did he sweep 2015ās Most Punchable Face awards?
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Letās just say Tony Stark has been perfecting the appropriate technology.
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I envision a Boondock Saints tableau, but with Ghost and Murray standing over him.
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there should be some spare polonium around hereā¦
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Hard to accept that he hasnāt been repeatably punched in the face.
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bbbbbbut really, they did also question him on his personal life too. Tell me when thatās ok in a congressional hearing of any topic. Privacy is boing boing cause #1.
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From what the article states, they asked him about massive payouts to his executive staff from the profits he earned from gouging hospitals and sick patients. They also asked him about the $2 million he spent on the Wu-Tang album from those profits. That is 100% OK in a hearing about jacking up pharma prices to unrealistic levels in order to become obscenely wealthy.
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Did they ask about the Valeant execās shopping habits?
Frankly, Iād like it if the Wu was orchestrating all of this. Shkreli is a perfect candidate for āfucking shit up from the inside.ā
That would be incorrect.
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Canāt we send him to Malheur?
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Ok. Maybe you should correct me then.
Shkreli was cofounder of MSMB Capital Management, which he is directly being accused of security fraud. Please see the document above. MSMB is being investigated as pretty much a ponzi schemeā¦the govāt alleges that Shkreli started Retrophin Inc., the pharmaceutical firm that bought out other pharmaceutics companies that then jacked the prices of the drugs these others sold. The allegation is that he used the funds of said ponzi scheme to create this company illegally.
He was then fired from this company for fiduciary irregularities. They sued him for $65 million saying that he took the money from THIS ONE to line his own pockets. The govāt is claiming this is part of the securities fraud as it was publicly traded company and a long line of what he is accused of doing.
He THEN took the money from this company and created Turing Pharmaceuticals about a year ago, yet another publicly traded company. It is accused that he some how sold himself three drugs from Retrophin that formed the basis of the drugs this company profited from. His board of directors forced him to resign noting similarities of the other companies and used his arrest as a way to ensure this.
So yeah. What part of this is āincorrectā?
Shkreli was arrested on securities fraud charges relating to defrauding MSMB while running Retrophin. The House panel was grilling him about his clever novel scheme for Daraprim price gouging he figured out (exploiting old FDA regulations) while running Turing Pharmaceuticals. Most of his pleading the 5th was just infantile grandstanding since were he to have spoken it wouldnāt have been self-incriminating.
Those charges heās facing and his behavior at Turing are loosely related (same sociopath, different scams), but theyāre different companies and so far as I know none of the current charges against him tie to Turing. Perhaps he may have used profits from his past fraud to help fund Turingās acquisitions, but thatās not what the investigation was inquiring into.
Also, FWIW, your previous blaming of the Congress for Shkreli figuring out how to exploit FDA rules to price gouge is very confusing since you didnāt explain what the Congress has to do with the FDA rules he was exploiting or what connection there is/was. What specifically did this Congress do that made Shkreli come up with his rather unique orphan drug scheme?
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The charges of fraud are about the Ponzi scheme at his hedge fund. The hearings are about his price-gouging. These are two unrelated things. (Even if his fraudulently obtained money is what enabled him to get involved with the pharma stuff.)
I personally donāt think itās a coincidence that they charged him with fraud that occurred years ago right after he drew a ton of attention to the shenanigans of the pharma industry. But answering questions about his price-gouging behavior isnāt going to affect these fraud charges. Separate acts.
Your statement that the hearings and the questions are about the crimes heās accused of in the fraud charges was incorrect. I donāt know whether any of the questioning could have led to additional charges; everything Iāve seen about the price-gouging indicated that it was assholish but not illegal.
Per the cited article:
However, the Food and Drug Administration has been faced with a huge backlog of applications for approval of generic drugs, giving companies like Valeant and Turing a few years to enjoy high profits before facing competition.
All right, we know these drugs work. No testing needed. So are the FDA administrators being called up before Congress to explain why they donāt just approve the god damn applications?
Iām going to disagree with you, and not to just be contrarian, but because of something I discovered today. I subscribe to C&EN, a magazine for chemists and chemical engineers. As you might imagine, Shkreli has made the magazine a few times (because pharmaceuticals) and this weekās issue had a brief article about how some members of congress wrote a letter to the NIH asking them to use a power that they have had since the 80s to license other companies to produce drugs that are currently under patent to other companies when a company is price-gouging. Francis Collins and the NIH have repeatedly refused, passing the buck back to Congress. Considering that the NIH is governed by the Executive branch, Iām going to say, āThanks Obama.ā
The fact is that weāve had the legal power to undo Shkreliās shenanigans, but weāre not using it.
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Iām going to assume youāre being facetious in actually directly blaming Barack Obama for Martin Shkreli hiking his pill prices to, in his own words, make a billion dollars.
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