Big Pharma’s Three Card Monte

     Shell companies, third party vendors, complex corporate structures. These are some of the financial ploys Big Pharma has used over the last twenty-five years to hide their outright bribery of government officials, inspectors, regulators and private physicians. Big Pharma has worked hard to hide their illegal payments to ensure approval for drugs that did not meet safety standards and to evade regulatory restrictions for unapproved off-label sales of their drugs to increase their own already huge profit margins.

     A new study from the University of Toronto just published in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics exposes long term planning, executing, and approving of these bribery strategies by everyone from the sales and distribution personnel through the middle managers and local executives right up to high-ranking corporate officers of most all pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, J and J, Eli Lilly, BMS, AstraZeneca, and GSK.

     The study searched through financial reports from 1999 to 2025 made to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Working Group on Bribery and found illicit paymentswere made by Big Pharma which totaled $12,633,989.00. Those pharmaceutical companies that were prosecuted and convicted then had to pay over $1,000,000,000 in sanctions, fines, returned profits, and prejudgment interest.

     Big Pharma has been rife with financial corruption for the last twenty-five years. These fines are for illegal, three card monte type business practices and are separate from the many billions Big Pharma has also paid out for lawsuits over the damage caused to individuals by their psychotropic drugs.

     The study also concedes that this level of bribery and corruption may only be the tip of the iceberg for Big Pharma. Smaller firms in the pharmaceutical industry that have escaped detection, companies in areas with more lax oversight or enforcement, and companies that have made bribery settlements confidentially will not have appeared in these OECD records.

     The authors conclude that “these findings underscore the systemic nature of bribery in the pharmaceutical sector.”

     Enough said.

     And these are the guys the American public is trusting to medicate us safely and effectively – per their multi-billion dollar marketing campaigns — for every little emotional wrinkle life presents?

     Caveat emptor.

     Thanks to Richard Sears for bringing this study to light in his news article on this week’s Mad in America website.