choof.org

January 03, 2004

In Support of the Death Penalty

The corporate death penalty, that is. The Corporate Crime Reporter has just released a report listing the top ten settlements under the False Claims Act. Although the Act passed in 1863, major litigation started in 1986, after the Act was amended to allow individuals to bring suits on behalf of the government. CCR has now called upon policymakers to adopt a death penalty for companies that defraud the government.

There are some interesting things in this report. If you look at the companies listed, you'll see that basically every big drug company is on it. In fact, over 50% of the companies were with health care corporations, according to CCR. 23% were defense contractors.

Here are the top ten. "HCA" is a Tennessee health care company. An asterisk * means that the settlement was accompanied by a criminal plea agreement.
1) HCA *
2) HCA *
3) TAP Pharmaceuticals Products Inc. *
4) Abbott Labs *
5) Fresenius Medical Care of North America *
6) SmithKline Beecham Clinical Labs
7) National Medical Enterprises *
8) AstraZeneca *
9) Bayer Corp. *
10) First American Health Care Of Georgia

Check out the full report. Warning: it is a PDF!

Posted by chris at January 3, 2004 02:48 PM

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