Reckitt to pay £1billion over United States opioid crisis

RECKITT Benckiser will pay £1.1bn to settle claims that it fraudulently marketed opioid addiction drugs.

In a humiliation for departing boss Rakesh Kapoor, the British company accepted what is thought to be the largest penalty so far linked to America’s opioid crisis.

The consumer goods giant was accused of fraudulently marketing its Suboxone product used to treat addicts coming off heroin and prescription drugs.

Reckitt’s subsidiary Indivior was worried about Suboxone tablets being copied by rivals when a patent ran out, so it developed a film version of the drug and tried to persuade regulators it was less likely than tablets to be abused or mistakenly taken by children. This was despite a lack of evidence to back the claims, US prosecutors allege.

Indivior and its sales teams were also accused of using aggressive sales tactics to persuade doctors to prescribe the film version of Suboxone instead of the tablet version. This included sending doctors articles about baby deaths, amid fears children might eat the tablets and die. As sales of tablets suffered, Suboxone film went on to take 70pc of the market.

Prosecutors say the false claims were part of a desperate effort by Reckitt and Indivior bosses to defend their stranglehold on sales of opioid addiction treatments in the US.

Indivior was spun out of Reckitt in 2014 and the two firms are now completely separate. Prosecutors brought charges against Indivior earlier this year after settlement talks collapsed. They claim that plans to fraudulently market the film version of Suboxone as safer than tablets went back as far as 2009 – when it was still part of its former parent.

Indivior denies the charges and has accused the US Department of Justice of seeking ‘selfserving headlines’.

Reckitt said ‘there is no admission of any wrongdoing by Reckitt or any group employee’.