How Pharma Supported the Antichrist

Shiite Muslims protest close to an image of anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr during a protest following Friday noon prayers in the impoverished Sadr City neighborhood of eastern Baghdad in 2008. AFP PHOTO
US probes pharma firms accused of aiding Iraqi militia that killed Americans
The lawsuit argues firms knowingly provided drugs sold on by the Mahdi Army to fund attacks on US troops
Michael Chand was working in south-east Iraq as a civilian contractor for American reconstruction efforts when his convoy was attacked in 2007 by forces believed to be loyal to then firebrand Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr.
At first, his family were told he was shot and killed. They later learned he was being held hostage at a time when militant attacks on American forces were at their bloodiest.
His body was returned three years later, bearing the hallmarks of torture.
Now his widow is one of the dozens of bereaved relatives who accuse big international pharmaceutical companies of helping bankroll the Mahdi Army in its campaign of violence through kickbacks of medicine and supplies given to the Iraqi ministry of health which was then under Mr Al Sadr’s control.
For Washington, Mr Al Sadr has been the most vocal opponent of the American war. His militias were blamed for deadly attacks on a US-backed political opponent and soldiers, triggering an arrest warrant for murder that was never executed. But in recent years he has moved away from his openly anti-US stance and the position in Washington has softened.
The five pharmaceutical companies deny the allegations but this week it emerged that the US Department of Justice had launched an investigation.
In a regulatory filing, AstraZeneca, the UK pharmaceutical giant, said it “has received an inquiry from the US Department of Justice in connection with an anti-corruption investigation relating to activities in Iraq, including interactions with the Iraqi government and certain of the same matters alleged in the lawsuit.”
The suit, filed in federal court in the District of Columbia on behalf of 112 victims, seeks to hold five companies responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers from 2005 to 2009.
The defendants are household names: General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Roche as well as AstraZeneca.

How Pharma Has Funded the Next War

AstraZeneca is one of five companies named in a lawsuit filed last year on behalf of members of the American military who were injured or killed in attacks in Iraq from 2005 to 2009.Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Justice Dept. Investigating Claims That Drug Companies Funded Terrorism in Iraq
July 31, 2018
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is investigating claims that major drug and medical device companies doing business in Iraq knew that the free medicines and supplies they gave the government to win business there would be used to underwrite terrorist attacks on American troops.
In a regulatory filing last week, AstraZeneca, a drugmaker based in Britain, disclosed that it had “received an inquiry from the U.S. Department of Justice in connection with an anti-corruption investigation relating to activities in Iraq.”
The filing said the inquiry was related to a lawsuit filed last year in federal court that accused five companies of winning contracts to sell their products to the Iraqi Ministry of Health with the understanding that they also provide additional medical supplies and medicines for free. The five companies are General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Roche Holding A.G. and AstraZeneca.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of members of the American military who were injured or killed in attacks from 2005 to 2009, at the height of the Iraq war.

How the US Funded the Antichrist

Ralph R. Reiland: Bankrolling U.S. troops' killers?

Ralph R. Reiland

Updated 8 hours ago

I remember when Johnson & Johnson was a nice, big American company selling warm-hearted products like baby powder.

Now the company, along with several of the other largest U.S. and European medical companies — including Pfizer and GE Healthcare — is targeted in a federal lawsuit. Families of dozens of U.S. troops killed or injured in Iraq allege that J&J and the other companies knowingly financed the anti-American Mahdi Army militia.

The lawsuit “claims the companies regularly paid kickbacks to officials in Iraq's Ministry of Health through their local agents,” reports USA Today correspondent Aamer Madhani, previously a White House and Baghdad correspondent for that newspaper.

“Officials at the ministry in turn used the proceeds to help fund the militia that carried out attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, the suit alleges,” Madhani says.

Following months of debate about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003 with U.S. and British forces entering southern Iraq and other land, air and sea assaults.

“In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, Iraq's health care spending surged,” reports Madhani, “and the Health Ministry's budget ballooned from $16 million during Saddam Hussein's final year in power to about $1 billion in 2004.”

Western companies seeking entry into the expanding Iraq market “were willing to pay kickbacks — billed as ‘commissions' or ‘free goods' — that amounted to as much as 20 percent of the value of a contract to ministry officials, the lawsuit alleges.”

The defendants also supposedly made illegal payments by promising after-sales support and services funded by giving money to their “local agents.”

The lawsuit says: “In reality, such services were illusory and functioned merely to create a slush fund the local agents could use to pass on ‘commissions to corrupt ministry officials.'”

The plaintiffs claim the companies' financial transactions aided and abetted the militants and thus violated U.S. anti-terrorism law.

“By 2005, the (health) ministry came under the control of loyalists of Muqtada al-Sadr, an Iranian-backed cleric,” explains Madhani, while “al-Sadr's political clout grew amid dissatisfaction among some Iraqis over the U.S. military presence.”

Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army backers “killed and injured hundreds of American troops in the years-long insurgency in the aftermath of the invasion,” Madhani notes.

The lawsuit claims the defendants “did not intend for the ‘free goods' provided” to the health ministry “to serve any legitimate charitable or medicinal purpose.

“It was widely understood in Iraq that the (ministry) operated more like a terrorist organization than a legitimate health entity,” the lawsuit says.

In 2007, Madhani writes, global intelligence firm Stratfor, which provided briefings to several of the companies named as defendants, reported that “U.S.-led forces in Iraq had arrested the then-deputy health minister for ‘selling health services and equipment in return for millions of dollars that he later funneled to Shiite militias.'”

Ralph R. Reiland is associate professor of economics emeritus at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur (rrreiland@aol.com).

British Pharma Funds the Antichrist

Iraq militia 'funded' by British drug giant Astrazeneca

 

 

By Matt Oliver For The Daily Mail

Published: 17:57 EDT, 29 October 2017 | Updated: 17:57 EDT, 29 October 2017

Astrazeneca was last night accused of funding a terrorist militia responsible for killing British soldiers in Iraq.

The Cambridge-based pharmaceuticals giant is one of several firms being dragged into a US court over allegations it bribed health officials who were aligned with Jaysh al-Mahdi, one of the most violent insurgent groups in Iraq.

Lawyers representing the families of US soldiers killed and wounded in the Iraq war claim Astra paid cash to win lucrative drug contracts. However, the money was then used to buy weapons and explosives that were deployed against British and US troops. The claims, filed in a federal court in Washington, relate only to US troops but could pave the way for similar litigation in the UK.

Accusations: Astrazeneca is one of several firms hit by allegations it bribed health officials who were aligned with Jaysh al-Mahdi, one of the most violent insurgent groups in Iraq

Ryan Sparacino, of Washington law firm Sparacino & Andreson, told the Mail: ‘Many coalition lives were destroyed because Astrazeneca made corrupt payments to Jaysh al-Mahdi terrorists in order to boost profits.’

Astra is named along with parent companies and subsidiaries of General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Roche Holding. They deny any wrongdoing.

The civil lawsuit accuses the companies of violating the US Anti-Terrorism Act and seeks damages. It is not expected that either side will present arguments in court for at least a year.

Claims brought by the families of US soldiers cover the deaths and injuries inflicted by Jaysh al-Mahdi between 2005 and 2009.

The group, also known as the Mahdi Army, was formed by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in response to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by US and UK forces. In 2004 it took control of parts of the country’s second-largest city, Basra, which was the main area where British troops were based during the subsequent occupation.

Bribes paid by Astra and other drug companies to Iraq’s health ministry helped fund the militia’s activities, court papers claim.

The ministry was effectively controlled by Jaysh al-Mahdi, they say. Goods allegedly sold to Iraq include an anti-psychotic drug, hospital equipment, a birth control injection and a breast cancer drug.

An Astrazeneca spokesman said: ‘We are focused on bringing life-saving medicines to patients, and are disheartened anyone would suggest we have any connection to terrorism-related activity.

‘We take all allegations of bribery extremely seriously, and we intend to vigorously defend against them.’

US Companies Fund Antichrist’s Terrorism

Federal lawsuit alleges Big Pharma firms funded Iraq terrorist organizations

[JURIST] US veterans filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] in federal court on Tuesday against five big pharmaceutical firms for funding terrorist organizations in Iraq.
The suit was brought by more than 100 US veterans and their families for injuries sustained in combating terrorist forces in Iraq. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website], accuses defendants AstraZeneca, GE Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Roche of violating several provisions of the federal Anti-Terrorism Act and intentionally inflicting emotional distress by giving medicine, medical devices and the like to Sadrists to sell in Iraq through the corrupt Iraqi Ministry of Health (MOH).
The MOH was led by the Mahdi Army, a group known for attacking US soldiers and working with known terrorist group Hezbolla [WP report]. According to the plaintiffs, the "Iraqi healthcare system offered the Sadrists several advantages, including the ability to raise funds for terrorism through the medical-goods contracting process," which the defendants are deemed principal parties to. The plaintiffs describe this process in part as:
Defendants' corrupt transactions with MOH also aided and abetted terrorism by supplying Jaysh al-Mahdi with the means to pay its rank-and-file terrorist fighters. Some U.S. government personnel in Iraq called Jaysh al-Mahdi "The Pill Army," because Sadr and his Jaysh al-Mahdi commanders were notorious for paying their terrorist fighters in diverted pharmaceuticals, rather than cash. Those fighters—most of whom were poor, uneducated, young Shi'a men—accepted such payment because they could re-sell the free drugs on the street or could consume the pills themselves as a form of intoxication.
In the 203-page complaint, the plaintiffs present findings on the financial impact the defendants allegedly had on the healthcare market. For instance, the MOH procurement budget "skyrocketed from $16 million per year under Saddam to an average of well more than $1 billion after 2004, when the Sadrists controlled MOH. As a result, the market for Defendants' products in Iraq increased substantially, providing an additional motive for Defendants to engage in corrupt transactions with MOH."
The plaintiffs alleged these pharmaceutical companies violated the Anti-Terrorism Act because although they did not engage in terrorism through actual harmful force, they are accused of aiding terrorist organizations, which also violates the Act.

Big Pharma Supported the Antichrist

Lawsuit: Big Pharma funded terrorism in Iraq with payments to corrupt health ministry

By Kyle Swenson

 

Followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr chant anti-government slogans and waved Iraqi flags during a protest in Basra on March 19, 2012. (Nabil al-Jurani/AP)

 

In the first years following the defeat of Saddam Hussein, there were few dark corners of battle-scarred Iraq less hospitable to Americans than the country’s ministry of health.
The walls of the ministry, headquartered in a dilapidated high-rise in eastern Baghdad, were covered with hundreds of photos of scowling Shiite clerics. Banners proclaimed “Death to America and Israel” and “we must destroy the occupiers.” Death squads commandeered the ministry’s ambulances for missions to hunt Sunnis. Assault rifles were stacked in offices. The morgues were used for torture. Everywhere flapped the flag of the Jaysh al-Mahdim, also known as the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia controlled by the radical anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The government office was so thoroughly infested that in 2007 Gen. David Petraeus, then in command of U.S. forces in Iraq, admitted Sadrists had “effectively hijacked the Ministry of Health.”
And yet at the same time, American and international pharmaceutical companies were regularly doing business with it.
A lawsuit that has just hit the federal court system claims that these drug giants were not only filling purchasing orders but offering substantial kickbacks and free medication, all while knowing they were in business with a group of terrorists engaged in violence against U.S. interests and Americans. Such payments, the lawsuit claims, were violations of the Anti-Terrorism Act.
The 203-page suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of 108 plaintiffs, seeks to hold the corporations responsible for the deaths and injuries of U.S. service members between 2005 and 2009.
The corporate defendants include subsidiaries of the largest medical brands in the world: AstraZeneca, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Roche. The businesses “obtained lucrative contracts from that ministry by making corrupt payments to the terrorists who ran it,” the complaint argues. “Those payments aided and abetted terrorism in Iraq by directly financing an Iran-backed, Hezbollah-trained militia that killed or injured thousands of Americans.”
The complaint is heading into uncharted legal territory. Last year, Congress expanded the provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act to allow for such suits. The updated statute specifies that the violence must have been committed by a group specifically designated by the secretary of state as a “foreign terrorist organization.” The Mahdi Army was not so designated, but Hezbollah was and still is.
The lawsuit claims a corrupt relationship between Big Pharma and Iraq stretches back to Saddam Hussein’s iron rule.
The fall of the Hussein regime created a scramble within the country between sects vying for a foothold in the new government. By early 2004, Sadrists had grabbed key positions in the ministry’s bureaucracy. “Sunnis and secular technocrats alike were purged in what one percipient witness describes as a widespread ‘occupational cleansing,'” the lawsuit says. “Doctors who exhibited insufficient loyalty to the Sadrists were killed or forced to flee.”
One Iraqi hospital worker told CBS News in 2006 that more than 80 percent of the original health care staff in one Iraqi hospital had been removed and replaced with Sadr loyalists.
“It’s going to get worse because there is no control and no accountability,” the worker told the network. “No one can stop them.”
A year later, Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East expert, testified at a congressional hearing that Sadrists were attempting to segregate the health care system by gender, “with doctors treating only patients of the same gender.”
At the same time, there was a great amount of money at stake in the post-Hussein Iraq for companies. The lawsuit points to one study showing that between 2006 to 2011, the “Iraqi pharmaceutical market experience a 17 % compound annual growth rate — making it the fastest-growing market in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.”
In 2004, the ministry’s Sadrist leaders “implemented a requirement that medical goods suppliers seeking” contracts with the ministry pay a religious tax “worth at least one-fifth the contract’s value.” One way companies paid the tax, according to the lawsuit, was by offering the ministry “free goods,” or “additional batches of in-kind drugs and equipment, free of charge, on top of the quantities for which MOH had actually paid.”
These extras, in turn, were sold by Sadrists on Iraq’s black market at a considerable markup. The Mahdi Army, in fact, became known among U.S. government personnel as the “Pill Army.” The cleric often paid his fighters in medical supplies and pharmaceuticals, which they either resold or ingested as intoxicants, the lawsuit says. These included antipsychotic drugs, birth control medication and cancer drugs.
Both the bribes and resales provided a cash flow feeding “directly into Jaysh al-Mahdi’s coffers and helped the militia buy weapons, training, and logistical support for its terrorist attacks,” the lawsuit claims, attacks that “likely killed more than 500 Americans and wounded thousands more.”
In 2011, Johnson & Johnson entered into an agreement with the Department of Justice to pay $70 million to resolve allegations of unlawful payments in a number of countries, including Iraq. General Electric resolved allegations leveled by the Securities and Exchange Commission involving Iraq kickbacks with a $23 million payment in 2010.
Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Roche have yet to publicly comment on the lawsuit. A spokesperson with General Electric told the Financial Times the company was reviewing the lawsuit. A Pfizer representative denied any wrongdoing to the Times as well.