Drug firm bets it won’t be charged

In the coming days, the Justice Department will decide whether to file criminal charges against one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies suspected of colluding with rivals to inflate the prices of widely used drugs.

The company, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, is betting that in the middle of a deadly pandemic, the Trump administration won’t dare to come down hard on the largest supplier of generic drugs in the United States.

It is a high-stakes gamble that could affect millions of Americans who rely on Teva’s dozens of inexpensive generic drugs, as well as its brand-name products like Copaxone, for multiple sclerosis, and Ajovy, for migraines.

Teva officials say criminal charges could cripple the Israeli company and potentially leave it unable to sell drugs to federal programs like Medicare.

For years, the Justice Department and state prosecutors have been investigating what they describe as a conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies to increase the prices of popular drugs. The department has already extracted guilty pleas and $224 million in penalties from four other drug companies.

Lawyers for Teva, which prosecutors believe was deeply involved in the conspiracy, until recently had been holding settlement negotiations with officials in the Justice Department’s antitrust division.

But in April, the company all but walked away from the talks, according to people on both sides of the discussions.

Teva officials have said that the company did nothing wrong and that they plan to vigorously defend themselves.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.