A British manufacturer of consumer products will pay more than $1 billion to the federal government to settle an investigation into its pharmaceutical division’s sales of an opioid drug.
Slough, U.K.-based Reckitt Benckiser said Thursday it would pay $1.4 billion to the government under a settlement with the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission to resolve investigations into sales of the drug Suboxone Film by its former prescription drugs division, Invidior. Invidior was formerly known as Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals and demerged from the parent company in 2014. It is headquartered in North Chesterfield, Virginia.
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Shares of Reckitt Benckiser were up 2.75 percent on the London Stock Exchange Thursday morning. Shares of Invidior were up 17 percent on the over-the-counter market.
Reckitt Benckiser said that it denies allegations that it engaged in wrongful conduct and that it acted lawfully at all times. The settlement will allow the company to continue participating in U.S. government programs.
In April, a grand jury in Virginia indicted Invidior over allegations that it raked in billions of dollars from sales of Suboxone Film by deceiving healthcare providers and benefit programs into believing it was safer and had less potential for diversion and abuse than other drugs to treat opioid addiction. It is also alleged that the company used an internet and telephone program called “Here to Help” to connect patients addicted to opioids with doctors the company knew to prescribe the drugs at high rates and for uses that were not clinically warranted. The indictment stated that the alleged activity started around 2010.
According to Invidior’s 2018 results, the company had $1 billion in sales last year, an 8 percent decline from the nearly $1.1 billion in sales in 2017. Suboxone Film has been one of the company’s primary sources of sales revenue.
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Suboxone Film received Food and Drug Administration approval for treating opioid dependence in 2002 and consists of the partial-opioid agonist buprenorphine and the opioid antagonist naloxone.
In May, a federal jury in Massachusetts convicted executives from Insys Therapeutics in what was described as the first successful prosecution of pharmaceutical executives for crimes related to the opioid crisis. The executives conspired to get doctors in various states to inappropriately prescribe Subsys, a fentanyl-based spray approved for breakthrough cancer pain, in exchange for bribes and kickbacks.
Photo: VladimirSorokin, Getty Images
