Market Place
Appeals court upholds criminal conviction of Shkreli; Holmes, Balwani win order
In the US, a federal appeals court has upheld the criminal conviction of ‘pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli (36), who is serving a seven-year sentence in a federal prison in Pennsylvania.
The panel in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit also upheld the forfeiture (of more than US$ 6.4 million) that a judge had imposed on Shkreli last year when he was convicted on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
He was convicted after a 2017 trial in Brooklyn federal court where prosecutors introduced evidence that he had repeatedly lied to investors about the performance of two hedge funds he ran, and then used money invested in those funds to help start the pharmaceuticals company Retrophin. Shkreli was later ousted from Retrophin.
In its ruling, the appeals panel disagreed with Shkreli’s claim that his trial judge’s instructions to the jury at his trial were incorrect and confusing to jurors. “The instruction given here correctly stated the law,” the appeals panel said in its decision. Likewise, the panel dismissed Shkreli’s argument that the forfeiture amount was inappropriate.
Meanwhile, in the Theranos scandal, its founder Elizabeth Holmes and her co-defendant, former Theranos president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, won an order requiring regulators to move quickly to turn over troves of documents they say are at the core of their defense.
Holmes’ lawyer had earlier said that this posed as “regulatory haze” in the Theranos founder’s way, preventing her from formulating her defense against the criminal fraud charges.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said it may take up to six months to turn over the information Holmes wants, which even prosecutors said in a court filing is “unacceptable.” Government lawyers said if necessary they will subpoena the agency. Holmes and Balwani are also pursuing documents from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Holmes and Balwani say the agency documents are key to rebutting charges that she and Balwani knew Theranos blood tests were inaccurate and unreliable, and misrepresented the capabilities of the company’s testing machines to doctors, patients and investors. Regulators concluded the blood-testing startup’s technology was a threat to patient health and forced the company, once valued at US$ 9 billion, to shut its labs.
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