Twitter gag is latest scandal for Shkreli

9 January 2017

Notorious former pharma boss Martin Shkreli has been banned from the social media site Twitter.

Mr Shkreli, who has been dubbed the ‘pharma bro,’ sparked outrage while he was the chief executive of privately-held Turing Pharmaceuticals for raising the price of Daraprim (pyrimethamine) – used to treat toxoplasmosis, a serious disease that affects AIDS patients and pregnant women and their babies – from $13.50 to $750 a pill.

He was forced to step down from the role in 2015 amid fraud charges. Turing is one of four companies which has been investigated by the US Senate for hiking the price of off-patent, life-saving drugs shortly after acquiring them, though the fraud charges relate to Mr Shkreli’s time as manager of hedge fund MSMB Capital Management and chief executive of biopharmaceutical company Retrophin.

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