The timing on this sure is a bummer for the Kilgore campaign:
The pharmaceutical company founded by a top political donor to gubernatorial candidate Jerry W. Kilgore agreed this week to pay $124.1 million to resolve claims it overcharged the government for drugs.
The U.S. Department of Justice released a statement Tuesday saying that King Pharmaceuticals of Bristol, Tenn., engaged in “systematic and widespread misreporting of its drug prices to the government” from 1994 through 2002.
The payment will be divided between federal agencies and states that purchased drugs from King during that period. Emily Lucier, a spokeswoman for Virginia Attorney General Judith Jagdmann, said the state will collect $1 million as its share of the King payment.
The company’s founder and CEO (he retired in 2002), John Gregory, has given $325,000 to Jerry Kilgore, making him Kilgore’s largest individual contributor. Note that the company’s “fleecing of America” (to use NBC’s hyperbolic term) took place between 1994-2002, under Gregory’s leadership, meaning that Kilgore’s $325,000 comes from that $124.1M in fraudulent income, sapped directly from the taxpayers.
Wonder if he’ll return it to the taxpayers. Naw: he doesn’t trust the people THAT much! :)