Wounded Vets & Widows Say Big Pharma Funded Terror in Iraq
WASHINGTON (CN) — Sixty-six families of U.S. troops killed or wounded in Iraq sued some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies Tuesday, claiming they paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Iraq’s Health Ministry for lucrative contracts, which financed the Iran-backed Shiite Mahdi Army.
The federal lawsuit, filed by attorneys with Figel & Frederick and Sparacino & Andreson, claims that industry giants — lead defendant Astrazeneca, Pfizer, GE Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson, Hoffman-La Roche, Genentech, Wyeth and others — knew that money from their bribes would finance the terrorist Shiite Mahdi Army, which killed and injured thousands of Americans in Iraq.
“After late 2004, companies selling medical goods to MOH [Iraq’s Ministry of Health] were dealing with a counterparty that was not a genuine medical institution; it was a de facto terrorist group,” the complaint states.
The 203 page lawsuit claims the Mahdi Army used the money to fund militia attacks on U.S. troops, and worked closely with Hezbollah, a Lebanese political and military group that the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization.
To break into the Iraq market after the U.S. invasion in 2003, Western companies had to pay “commissions … an Iraqi euphemism for bribes,” worth 20 percent of a contract’s value, according to the complaint.
https://www.courthousenews.com/wounded-vets-widows-say-big-pharma-funded-terror-iraq/
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