Drugs pricing-fixing case halted after eight years

‘Operation Holbein’, the case against five pharmaceutical companies and nine executives accused of conspiring to defraud the UK National Health Service by fixing the price of generic drugs between 1996 and 2000, has ended after the Serious Fraud Office was refused leave to appeal an earlier judgement. In July this year, Mr Justice Pitchford ruled that at the time the proceedings were brought, price-fixing was not a criminal offence and that the indictment could not be amended. Richard Alderman, SFO Director, authorised the appeal to save one of the agency’s longest, most complex – six million documents were collected – and at UK£25 million, most expensive prosecutions. Despite the setback, the SFO may feel partially vindicated by the success of the parallel civil proceedings in which the Department of Health has so far recovered more than UK£34m from the pharma companies.