Reckitt Benckiser agreed to pay up to $1.4 billion to resolve long-running civil and criminal investigations by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission into the sales and marketing of Suboxone Film, an opioid-addiction treatment, which is now sold by Indivior, its former pharmaceuticals unit.
The deal comes three months after federal prosecutors charged Indivior, which Reckitt spun off in 2014, with engaging in a multibillion-dollar fraudulent scheme to increase prescriptions of the medicine, which is dissolved in the mouth and also used to treat addiction to other narcotics.
The feds alleged Indivior deceived doctors and payers into believing the medicine was safer and less prone to diversion and abuse than other such treatments, although Indivior lacked any scientific evidence to support those claims. The indictment also claimed the company used a phone and Internet program to connect patients to doctors who were inappropriately prescribing opioids.
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