India-born billionaire on tribunal in US for bribing doctors

Washington, Jan 29: An India-born onetime billionaire and founder of a drug company went on trial in the US along with four others on charges of paying doctors millions of dollars in bribes to lure them into prescribing a highly addictive opioid painkiller meant solely for cancer patients.

John Kapoor, 75, plotted to bribe doctors across the country to prescribe a fentanyl spray in order to outshine competitors and line his own pockets, a federal prosecutor told jurors as the trial opened Monday in the District Court in Boston.

"This is not a complicated case. It s a case about greed — about greed and its consequences — and what happens when you put profits over people," Lazarus said at the closely-watched trial.

The bribes were paid in the form of fees for sham speaking events that were advertised as educational opportunities for other doctors, prosecutors allege. Insys adjusted payments based on how many prescriptions doctors wrote, misrepresented patients medical histories to dupe insurers into covering Subsys for people without cancer, and even hired a woman who was a former stripper and escort service manager as a key sales executive.



Kapoor s lawyer told jurors that Insys was open about its speaker programme and even reported payments to doctors online. Paying doctors to teach others about a medication is not illegal and is a practice widely used by pharmaceutical companies, Attorney Beth Wilkinson said.

Patients say in a slew of lawsuits filed against the company that they were given high doses of the potent narcotic even though they didn t have cancer, weren t warned of the risks and became addicted before suffering through withdrawal when they were cut off.

Prosecutors say Insys executives targeted doctors at pain clinics known for operating "pill mills" and pushed physicians to prescribe the drug at ever-increasing doses.

Insys employees who managed to get doctors to prescribe higher doses were rewarded with bonuses, prosecutors say. Kapoor "demanded success at all costs," Lazarus said. And when the drug wasn t doing as well as Kapoor wanted, "he decided to get the success he demanded by breaking the law," he said.