Statement from NJDSC Vice Chair Lizette Delgado-Polacano on Bob Hugin’s $280 million Celgene Settlement

While Bob Hugin distracts with misleading attacks on Senator Bob Menendez, he continues to avoid taking a position on anything of substance, any issue, policy or legislative plan that matters to New Jerseyans.  The tactic has also allowed Hugin to go virtually unchallenged on his record as CEO of pharmaceutical giant Celgene, but it’s important to take a closer look. Hugin pretends to be someone he is not, when last year, he paid $280 million to the U.S. Department of Justice to settle whistle blower charges that he violated anti-fraud laws in 28 states, including New Jersey.  Hugin and his company were accused of swindling taxpayers by defrauding Medicare and putting cancer patients at risk by marketing its drugs for unapproved purposes, lying to doctors about side effects, and paying kickbacks to physicians to prescribe Celgene’s expensive cancer drugs. And while Hugin claims his company went out of his way to ensure patients could afford his drugs, the same lawsuit revealed that Hugin and Celgene instead used its patient assistance programs to get rich — a money-making scheme that generated an estimated $21 million in sales for every $1 million spent allegedly helping patients.

But Bob Hugin didn’t stop putting profits ahead of patients. He preyed on cancer patients’ desperate struggle to survive by doubling the price of Celgene’s drugs in the United States — hiking it three separate times in 2017 alone — while simultaneously cutting the cost of the same medications by nearly half in Russia. Hugin also spent record money on lobbyists to kill federal legislation and block the manufacturing of lower-cost generics in the United States, while Celgene struck a deal with a Russian company to make generics there.

The motive behind each and every one of Hugin’s moves was to boost company profits at the expense of cancer patients and the American taxpayer.  But Bob Hugin doesn’t want New Jerseyans to know the truth of what went on at Celgene on his watch.

He paid $280 million to make his problems go away, avoid trial, and then had the record and his videotaped deposition sealed from the public. What is Bob Hugin hiding?  Greedy CEO Bob Hugin cares only about lining his own pockets and those of his shareholders, not cancer patients, not about law and order, and certainly not the American people. It is up to New Jersey voters to demand justice for what Hugin has done and hold him accountable for his action at Celgene.