Originally published August 6 2004
Pharmaceutical Maker Bristol-Meyers Squibb Pays $150 Million Settlement to SEC to Settle Charges of Accounting Fraud
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
In yet more news about the criminal activity of pharmaceutical companies, Bristol-Meyers Squibb has agreed to pay $150 million to settle charges levied by the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission. Bristol-Meyers has agreed to pay a $100 million civil fine and $50 million in other fines in response to accounting violations levied by the SEC. The SEC says that the company conducted the cover-up by selling massive quantities of drugs to wholesalers and then improperly booking the revenue from $1.5 billion dollars from those sales. The method by which the company booked this revenue is in violation of generally accepted accounting principles, says the SEC. This is on the heels of a $300 million lawsuit filed by shareholders of Bristol-Meyers, which the company recently lost.
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So what is Bristol-Meyers' response to all of this? After settling the charges, they say: "The company has implemented a series of internal controls and procedures designed to ensure that its financial reporting processes meet the highest standards of integrity and professionalism." But of course!
In my view, this is simply more evidence of the corruption of drug companies and a demonstration of the great lengths to which they will go in order to maximize profits and deceive investors. Bristol-Meyers is just one of many pharmaceutical companies that have been caught engaging in criminal acts, but it is the only large drug company that has been found in violation of law by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
As a person who covers the pharmaceutical industry, none of this surprises me in the least. I see this kind of thing every day -- pharmaceutical companies going to any lengths to maximize profits and sell more drugs by exploiting the public and breaking laws. The funny part to all this is that the real fraud is the products themselves. The real fraud is found in the prescription drugs which are over-hyped, over-marketed, and based on highly distorted scientific studies that minimize health risks and exaggerate health claims.
During the marketing of these prescription drugs, toxic side effects are minimized or even ignored altogether, and even when drugs are approved by the FDA, they continue to demonstrate extremely toxic side effects throughout the human body that weren't acknowledged in the original studies. So even when drugs are being sold in an honest way, and honest accounting practices are pursued, there's still, in my opinion, a giant fraud going on, and that's the marketing of prescription drugs to a population that doesn't really need drugs.
What they need is good health practices through nutrition, physical exercise and avoidance of toxic food ingredients that promote chronic disease. But until our country realizes that, big drugs are big business, and big drug companies will apparently do practically anything to pocket one more dollar, regardless of what laws have to be broken in the process.
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