Big Pharma’s Big Jerk ARRESTED for alleged securities fraud

Martin Shkreli, the Turing Pharmaceuticals executive notorious for raising drug prices by obscene amounts (most notably raising the price of Daraprim, a drug used to treat AIDS patients, from $13.50/pill to $750/pill)  and being an in-your-face asshole about it, has been arrested on federal securities fraud charges:

Martin Shkreli, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and former hedge fund manager who has been widely criticized for drug price gouging, was arrested Thursday morning by the federal authorities.

The investigation, in which Mr. Shkreli has been charged with securities fraud, is related to his time as a hedge fund manager and running the biopharmaceutical company Retrophin — not the price-gouging controversy that has swirled around him.

[…]

The federal charges are believed to parallel a civil lawsuit filed against Mr. Shkreli in August by Retrophin, whose board ousted Mr. Shkreli as chief executive in September 2014. In its lawsuit, Retrophin accused Mr. Shkreli of having used the company as a kind of personal piggy bank to help pay off upset investors who lost money at the hedge fund MSMB. Among the ways he did this, the lawsuit says, was by hiring some of these investors as sham consultants to Retrophin.

Big Pharma’s Big Jerk, as I like to call Shkreli, is not being charged over raising drug prices, but over allegations that he used Retrophin, a pharmaceutical company he was once the CEO for, as a piggy bank to pay off investors who lost money at MSMB, the hedge fund Shkreli co-founded. In addition to the criminal charges against Big Pharma’s Big Jerk, there’s an ongoing civil suit into the matter.

This couldn’t happen to a more deserving person if you asked for it.

Advertisement

Rahm Emanuel hiding emails from the public

Remember when Rahm Emanuel promised to make Chicago’s city government more transparent? Well, he’s certainly not living up to his promises:

Heading into the final days of campaigning for re-election, incumbent Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has faced intensifying criticism for being too close to the city’s financial elite. Precisely how close, though, remains a matter of conjecture — and most likely will remain so until after the Tuesday runoff vote. That’s because Emanuel’s administration has for weeks blocked the release of correspondence between his administration and one of the Democratic mayor’s top donors, Michael Sacks. The administration has also refused to release details about tens of millions of dollars in shadowy no-bid city payments to some of Emanuel’s largest campaign contributors.

Yes, you read that correctly: Rahm Emanuel, who is facing a difficult re-election battle in this year’s Chicago mayoral runoff, is hiding emails between his administration and Michael Sacks, the CEO of the private equity firm Grosvenor and big-money Rahm donor. The fact that Rahm is hiding emails between his administration and one of his big-money campaign donors tells me that, more than likely, Rahm is hiding something that he doesn’t want Chicagoans to know about.

Let me make my position clear on public officials and email transparency: If it’s an email through a government email account, an email about government business, or both, it should be made available as public record. I am so sick and tired of politicians trying to hide their emails from the public eye. Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and many other politicians in both major parties have hid government-related email accounts and other online communications from the public. Now, you can add Rahm Emanuel to that growing list of secretive politicians.

If you live in Chicago and want someone who will restore integrity to the city, please vote for Chuy Garcia. The runoff election will be held Tuesday.