What did Teva admit in the criminal price-fixing case?
Teva admitted agreeing with competitors not to bid for certain customers for three generic drugs — pravastatin, clotrimazole and tobramycin — and paid a $225 million criminal penalty while divesting its US pravastatin business.
A federal grand jury indicted Teva USA in August 2020 on three counts of Sherman Act violations, covering drugs including pravastatin, carbamazepine, clotrimazole, etodolac, fluocinonide, warfarin, nadolol, temozolomide and tobramycin. In August 2023 Teva entered a three-year deferred prosecution agreement. It admitted that in three instances between 2013 and 2015 it agreed with competitors not to bid to supply a customer with pravastatin, clotrimazole and tobramycin respectively.
It agreed to pay $225 million over five years, donate $50 million worth of clotrimazole and tobramycin to humanitarian organisations, and divest its US pravastatin business, a remedy the Justice Department called extraordinary. The agreement let Teva avoid mandatory exclusion from federal health programmes. Teva attributed the conduct to a single former employee.