Former Insys CEO admits illegally pushing addictive opioid

10 January 2019

A former chief executive of US specialty pharma firm Insys Therapeutics (Nasdaq: INSY) has entered a guilty plea to allegations of conspiring to bribe physicians to prescribe the addictive opioid Subsys, an under-the-tongue fentanyl spray for managing severe pain in cancer patients.

Alongside other former executives and managers of the Arizona-based firm, Michael Babich, who resigned from the role in 2015, was accused of conspiracy to commit racketeering, mail and wire fraud, and conspiracy to violate the anti-kickback law.

The offences are in relation to what prosecutors called a nationwide conspiracy to bribe medical practitioners to unnecessarily prescribe the drug and defraud payers of the medication, including insurers.

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