AmerisourceBergen Pays $625mln To Settle Charges Of Distributing Unapproved Drug

(RTTNews) - The U.S. Department of Justice said that AmerisourceBergen Corp. and its subsidiaries AmerisourceBergen Specialty Group, AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation, Oncology Supply Company, and Medical Initiatives Inc. have agreed to pay $625 million to resolve allegations arising from its operation of a facility that improperly repackaged oncology-supportive injectable drugs into pre-filled syringes and improperly distributed those syringes to physicians treating vulnerable cancer patients. The drugs involved in ABC's scheme were Procrit, Aloxi, Kytril and its generic form granisetron, Anzemet and Neupogen.

Last year, AmerisourceBergen Specialty Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of AmerisourceBergen Corporation, pled guilty to illegally distributing misbranded drugs and agreed to pay $260 million to resolve criminal liability for its distribution of these drugs from a facility that was not registered with the Food and Drug Administration. The settlement announced today resolves ABC's civil liability to the United States under the False Claims Act for causing false claims for the drugs it repackaged to be submitted to federal health care programs.

"The $885 million combined civil and criminal resolution with ABC underscores our determination to utilize all tools at our disposal to pursue illicit schemes that seek to profit from circumvention of important safeguards designed to protect the nation's drug supply," said Assistant Attorney General Joseph H. Hunt of the Department of Justice's Civil Division.