WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Heritage Pharmaceuticals must answer allegations that it deceived the US Congress about its price fixing practices to get more profits from selling a common antibiotic, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Elijah Cummings said in a letter to the company.
"We are very concerned that you made assertions to Congress on behalf of Heritage during the exact time period that its executives engaged in a price fixing scheme to prevent competition from driving down prices of doxycycline hyclate, according to the Department of Justice," the letter said on Friday.
Two former Heritage executes, Jeffrey Glazer and Jason Malek have been charged with conspiring to "fix prices, rig bids and allocate customers" for the antibiotic doxycycline hyclate for more than two years, the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday.
"If these allegations are true and Heritage executives sought to keep the price of doxycycline hyclate artificially high through price fixing and other anticompetitive arrangements, the company’s assertions to Congress now seem disingenuous at best," Sanders and Cummings wrote.
The lawmakers said the company should provide the information before the end of the year.