Green Cross Offices Raided

Offices of the Green Cross company in Osaka, Japan, have been raided by Japanese prosecutors on suspicion of professional negligence which resulted in deaths connected to the sale by the firm of HIV-tainted blood products (Marketletters passim).

The raid marked the start of criminal investigations of drug companies involved in the scandal. The five companies involved and the Japanese government recently reached an out-of-court settlement with those who contracted the virus as a result of using the contaminated products.

Meantime in the USA, Green Cross' wholly-owned subsidiary Alpha Therapeutic is expected to pay around $90 million in damages for supplying HIV-contaminated blood products in the USA, under a settlement reached in a northern Illinois federal court. Hemophiliacs had sued Alpha and three other US firms and have accepted a settlement worth $100,000 in compensation for each of the 600 or so plaintiffs. The American Center for Disease Control estimates that around 6,000 hemophiliacs were infected, which could raise total damages for the four drug companies to $600 million.