A first for the European Commission: Five pharma companies fined $14M for API price fixing

The Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion on Thurs­day an­nounced a first for its reg­u­la­tion of the phar­ma in­dus­try: It’s fin­ing five phar­ma com­pa­nies — Al­ka­loids of Aus­tralia, Al­ka­loids Cor­po­ra­tion, Boehringer In­gel­heim, Lin­nea and Tran­so-Pharm — €13.4 mil­lion ($14.2 mil­lion) for col­lud­ing to fix the price of a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­gre­di­ent used in a drug to treat stom­ach cramps.

The Com­mis­sion said its in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed that six com­pa­nies — the sixth com­pa­ny C2 Phar­ma re­vealed the price fix­ing to the Com­mis­sion and was not fined — co­or­di­nat­ed and agreed to fix the min­i­mum sales price of the in­gre­di­ent, known as N-butyl­bro­mide scopo­lamine/hyoscine, which is com­mon­ly used in the an­ti­spas­mod­ic drug Bus­co­pan as well as in its gener­ic ver­sions. The in­gre­di­ents were shipped to cus­tomers such as dis­trib­u­tors and gener­ic drug­mak­ers, and the com­pa­nies col­lab­o­rat­ed to al­lo­cate quo­tas.

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