Price-fixing

Pay for Delay

Forty years ago, federal policymakers thought they had found a solution to the problem of escalating prescription drug prices. The Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984 made it easier for generic manufacturers to bring to market lower-cost alternatives to brand-name medicines whose patent protection was expiring.

Fast forward to 2023. Recently, a federal judge in New York approved a $54 million class action settlement between plaintiffs led by a police union health plan and two drug companies accused of participating in an improper agreement to delay the introduction of a generic version of the Alzheimer’s drug Namenda. In 2020 another group of plaintiffs in a related case received a settlement of $750 million.

Once hailed as heroes that would restore consumer-friendly competition to the pharmaceutical industry, many generic producers instead became conspirators in what are known as “pay for delay” schemes to extend the market domination of costly brand-name products.

The extent of this degeneration is documented in data I have been collecting for an expansion of Violation Tracker and that will be analyzed in a report to be published next week. That expansion covers class action lawsuits designed to combat illegal price-fixing by large companies in a wide range of industries. This private litigation often follows actions brought by federal and state prosecutors.

Cases involving pay for delay, which amounts to an indirect form of price-fixing, make up a substantial portion of the litigation challenging anti-competitive practices. I was able to identify more than 100 settlements over the past two decades in which generic and brand-name producers paid out nearly $8 billion. Cases brought by federal agencies or state attorneys general resulted in another $2 billion in fines and settlements.

The company that has paid out the most is generics giant Teva Pharmaceuticals, whose 19 settlements (including those involving subsidiaries) total $2.5 billion. AbbVie’s total is $1.5 billion in 21 cases. Five other companies—GlaxoSmithKline, Sun Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer, Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squibb each have totals between $500 million and $800 million.

The largest single penalty came in 2015 in an action brought by the Federal Trade Commission accusing Cephalon Inc. of illegally blocking generic competition to its blockbuster sleep-disorder drug Provigil. The settlement required Teva Pharmaceuticals, which had acquired Cephalon in 2012, to make a total of $1.2 billion available to compensate purchasers, including drug wholesalers, pharmacies, and insurers, which overpaid because of Cephalon’s illegal conduct.

High drug costs are one of the factors contributing to inflation in the United States. Unlike energy prices, which are highly susceptible to swings in international markets, drug prices are largely under the control of manufacturers, due to patents and the unwillingness (until recently) of the federal government to allow Medicare to negotiate with the industry.

Big Pharma, not satisfied with those benefits, has frequently crossed the line into illegality through these pay-for-delay schemes. The $10 billion in penalties paid by the industry is in all likelihood far less than the economic gains it has reaped by artificially prolonging the market life of overpriced medications. It’s something to keep in mind during the next expensive visit to the pharmacy.

The report, Conspiring Against Competition, will be published on April 18.

A Legacy of Corruption

According to conventional economic thinking, commodity prices are governed by impersonal market forces. That’s how oil companies, for instance, are able to claim they are not to blame for soaring petroleum prices even as they rake in record profits.

What these corporations conveniently leave out of their narrative is the fact that markets can be manipulated. This reality is made abundantly clear in a multinational criminal case involving the Swiss commodity trading and mining company Glencore.

Law enforcement officials in the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil have just announced that Glencore will plead guilty and pay more than $1 billion in penalties for a case that involves, among other things, manipulation of fuel oil prices in the United States over a period of eight years. According to the U.S. Justice Department, Glencore created phony transactions in order to effect changes in benchmark rates that benefitted the company’s trading positions. As punishment for this behavior, Glencore will pay a criminal fine of $341 million and criminal forfeiture of $144 million.

The charges against Glencore also include allegations of widespread bribery. The DOJ stated that over a decade the company violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by making more than $100 million in improper payments to government officials in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Brazil, Venezuela, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

After using these bribes to gain improper business advantages, Glencore was said to have concealed the payments by entering into sham consulting agreements and paying inflated invoices. In other words, it falsified its own records in an effort to cover up its corruption. For these offenses, Glencore was hit with a criminal fine of $428 million and disgorgement in the amount of $272 million.

It is unclear to what extent Glencore’s market manipulation behavior affected overall fuel oil prices in the United States and what harm its bribes may have caused in those African and South American countries.

What is undeniable is that Glencore has now joined the list of large corporations whose ethics policies have turned out to be a sham. As of this writing, the company’s website still touts its code of conduct, which is spelled out in a 59-page document. It includes statements such as: “We act honestly and with integrity and are accountable for everything we do.” And: “We do not engage in corruption and we never pay bribes regardless of who we’re dealing with or what the local custom or practice is.”

It actually should come as no surprise that Glencore would fail to live up to those high-minded ideals. After all, the company was originally created by the notorious Marc Rich, who in 1983 was indicted in the United States on dozens of criminal counts relating to racketeering, income tax evasion, wire fraud, and violation of economic sanctions against Iran.

Facing the possibility of many years in prison, Rich fled the country and spent years eluding a team of U.S. marshals tasked with bringing him back to face trial. While he was a fugitive, his companies paid millions in civil penalties. Not only did Rich avoid being extradited but he received a highly controversial pardon from Bill Clinton on his last day in office.

Glencore’s dubious behavior could even be seen in its press release announcing the resolution of the criminal cases. In it, the company stated that Glencore cooperated with the investigations, whereas the DOJ release emphasized “the company’s failure to voluntarily and timely disclose the conduct to the department.” In other words, Glencore is trying to take credit for having cooperated only after it was caught. It is appropriate that the resolution of the case includes a requirement that the company retain an independent compliance monitor for three years.

The Glencore case comes on the heels of DOJ’s multi-billion-dollar resolution of a case involving the financial services company Allianz, which was accused of engaging in a massive scheme to lure pension funds into complex investments that ended up generating massive losses.

These two resolutions have not attracted a lot of attention in the U.S., where neither Allianz nor Glencore is a household name. Yet the cases are indications that the Biden DOJ may very well be making good on its promise to get tougher on corporate crime after the lax enforcement during the Trump years. I look forward to seeing the book thrown at some large domestic companies as well.

The European Banking Blacklist

The European Union has shaken up the financial world by excluding a group of large banks from participating in the marketing of bonds being floated to help in the economic recovery of member states. According to reports in various business publications, the ten banks are being singled out because of their involvement in cases in which they were accused of manipulating bond and currency markets. In other words, they are being punished for misconduct.

While these moves may not have a major bottom-line impact on the banks—which include U.S. giants JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America—the EU is sending an important message about corporate wrongdoing.

Large companies have come to assume they can essentially buy their way out of legal jeopardy by paying fines and settlements that have grown larger but are still far from seriously punitive. As Violation Tracker documents, the big banks are Exhibit A for this phenomenon.

The database shows that the financial sector overall has paid more than $300 billion in U.S. penalties over the past two decades, far and away more than any other part of the economy. Bank of America is at the top of the list of penalty payers, with a total of $82 billion. JPMorgan is second with $35 billion, and Citigroup is fourth with $25 billion.

Non-U.S. banks being singled out by the EU have also accumulated substantial U.S. penalties, apart from what they have paid elsewhere. For example, Deutsche Bank has paid out $18 billion and NatWest (formerly the Royal Bank of Scotland) $13 billion.

The EU’s move is focused on a particular set of scandals in which these banks were alleged to have colluded to rig markets. Among these are cases involving the manipulation of currency markets. In 2015, Citigroup, JPMorgan, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland each paid hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements to resolve criminal charges brought by the U.S. Justice Department.

Unlike many other situations in which large corporations are offered deferred prosecution or non-prosecution agreements, the banks in this case had to plead guilty to the felony charges. Yet there was little in the way of consequences beyond the penalty payments. The banks were put on probation, on the assumption this would cause them to cease their bad behavior. Yet all the banks continued to rack up regulatory violations in subsequent years.

Reuters estimates that the blacklisted banks will lose out on about 86 million euros in syndication fees. This is a lot less than what the banks have paid in penalties. Yet, if banks begin to see that misconduct will cause them to be excluded from business opportunities, that may be more of an inducement to avoid corrupt behavior.

The dilemma for policymakers is that misconduct is so widespread in the financial sector that it is difficult to find service providers with clean hands. While excluding the ten banks, the EU turned to a group of others to handle the debt issue. Those included the likes of HSBC and BNP Paribas, which have their own substantial corporate rap sheets. Perhaps a larger blacklist is needed.

Foreign-Owned Regulatory Violators Found Among PPP Recipients

The massive Paycheck Protection Program was depicted as a necessary measure to save American small businesses, yet the list of recipients of the forgivable loans released by the Treasury Department contains numerous companies that are neither small nor American.

These include firms such as Jindal Saw USA LLC and JSW Steel (US) Inc., two affiliates of the Jindal Group, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate owned by one of India’s wealthiest families. JSW Steel’s investments in the United States have been touted by Donald Trump, though the company later sued the U.S. Commerce Department when it was denied permission to import steel from India without paying a steep tariff.

Continental Carbon Company, owned by Taiwan’s International CSRC Investment Holdings Company (formerly China Synthetic Rubber Corporation), received a PPP loan worth between $5 million and $10 million.

These are two examples that have emerged from an examination of the PPP recipient list my colleagues and I have been doing as part of the integration of the data into our Covid Stimulus Watch website. Here are some others:

Giti Tire Manufacturing (USA) Ltd and Giti Tire (USA) Ltd, subsidiaries of Singapore’s Giti Tire.

Sekisui Voltek, LLC, a subsidiary of Japan’s Sekisui Chemical.

The U.S. subsidiary of Korean Air Lines (owned by the Hanjin Group).

Asahi Forge of America Corporation, a subsidiary of Japan’s Asahi Forge.

It does not come as a complete surprise that foreign-owned companies appeared on the PPP list. There was discussion of this possibility at the time the program was debated and enacted.

The issue then was whether such entities would be eligible for the loans if they were part of foreign companies with a workforce that surpassed the PPP employee limits. The muddled guidance provided by the Trump Administration has apparently allowed funds to go to firms linked to foreign corporations that are far from small businesses.

Another concern has come to light as we match PPP recipients to the data my colleagues and I have assembled for our other database, Violation Tracker: some of these foreign companies getting PPP loans have a history of misconduct.

The U.S. operations of Jindal Group have paid more than $1.4 million in penalties, mostly resulting from workplace safety and health violations.

Continental Carbon has paid over $2 million in penalties, nearly all of which involved Clean Air Act violations. Giti Tire, Sekisui, and Asahi Forge have also paid penalties to OSHA and/or the EPA.

In 2007 Korean Air Lines had to pay a $300 million criminal fine to the U.S. Justice Department after pleading guilty to conspiring to fix the prices of passenger and cargo flights. In 2018 Hanjin Transportation Co. Ltd., also part of the Hanjin Group, paid more than $6 million to the Justice Department to resolve allegations relating to a bid-rigging conspiracy that targeted contracts to supply fuel to United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force bases in South Korea.

In creating the Paycheck Protection Program, Congress probably did not intend to provide assistance to entities that are owned by large foreign companies and that had a track record of repeated regulatory violations and other serious misconduct.

Now that there is consideration of extending and expanding PPP, the question is whether such companies will continue to benefit from the largesse of American taxpayers.

U.S. Prosecutors and Foreign Corporations

Federal prosecutors recently announced that telecommunications giant Ericsson will pay more than $1 billion to resolve allegations that it conspired to make illegal payments to win contracts in five countries. The settlement included a $520 million criminal penalty imposed by the Justice Department and a $540 million civil payment to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This was the latest in a long series of cases brought under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the 1977 law that emerged out of the Watergate-era revelations about improper overseas payments by U.S. corporations. But what the case against Sweden’s Ericsson highlights is the extent to which the law is being applied to foreign corporations as well as domestic ones.

In fact, companies based outside the United States increasingly appear to be the primary targets of prosecutors. In the period since the Trump Administration took office, foreign corporations have paid about $4 billion in FCPA penalties to DOJ and the SEC—more than seven times the sum paid by domestic firms. Apart from the Ericsson settlement, the largest combined penalties have been paid by a Russian company ($831 million by Mobile TeleSystems PJSC) and another Swedish one ($731 million by Telia).

By contrast, U.S.-based firms have gotten off with much lighter financial punishment. The only domestic company paying more than $100 million was Walmart, though its long-delayed $281 million penalty was well below what had been expected.

The tougher treatment of foreign companies can also be seen in the prosecution of price-fixing. Violation Tracker shows that during the Trump Administration foreign companies have paid more than $723 million to DOJ in criminal penalties, whereas domestic firms have been penalized only $44 million. There were seven fines of $50 million or more among the foreign companies; none among those based in the United States.

This tendency toward imposing heavier penalties on foreign companies is not unique to the Trump years. During the Obama Administration, seven of the ten largest FCPA settlements involved foreign corporations, as did nine of the ten largest price-fixing cases.

There is no evidence to suggest that foreign companies are more prone to law-breaking and thus account for more of the penalties. When it comes to offenses that are more purely domestic in nature – such as environmental, consumer protection and employment violations – U.S.-based companies more than hold their own.

The question is whether the federal government is using those portions of its enforcement powers that impact more heavily on international trade to put an added burden on the foreign competitors of U.S. companies. Perhaps this is an indirect form of protectionism.

Personally, I have no problem with the prosecution of foreign corporations that are engaged in misconduct, as long as domestic companies doing the same thing are not being let off the hook.

The 2019 Corporate Rap Sheet

While the news has lately focused on political high crimes and misdemeanors, 2019 has also seen plenty of corporate crimes and violations. Continuing the pattern of the past few years, diligent prosecutors and career agency officials have pursued their mission to combat business misconduct even as the Trump Administration tries to erode the regulatory system. The following is a selection of significant cases resolved during the year.

Online Privacy Violations: Facebook agreed to pay $5 billion and to modify its corporate governance to resolve a Federal Trade Commission case alleging that the company violated a 2012 FTC order by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information.

Opioid Marketing Abuses: The British company Reckitt Benckiser agreed to pay more than $1.3 billion to resolve criminal and civil allegations that it engaged in an illicit scheme to increase prescriptions for an opioid addiction treatment called Suboxone.

Wildfire Complicity: Pacific Gas & Electric reached a $1 billion settlement with a group of localities in California to resolve a lawsuit concerning the company’s responsibility for damage caused by major wildfires in 2015, 2017 and 2018. PG&E later agreed to a related $1.7 billion settlement with state regulators.

International Economic Sanctions: Britain’s Standard Chartered Bank agreed to pay a total of more than $900 million in settlements with the U.S. Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the New York Department of Financial Services and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office concerning alleged violations of economic sanctions in its dealing with Iranian entities.

Emissions Cheating: Fiat Chrysler agreed to pay a civil penalty of $305 million and spend around $200 million more on recalls and repairs to resolve allegations that it installed software on more than 100,000 vehicles to facilitate cheating on emissions control testing.

Foreign Bribery: Walmart agreed to pay $137 million to the Justice Department and $144 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Brazil, China, India and Mexico.

False Claims Act Violations: Walgreens agreed to pay the federal government and the states $269 million to resolve allegations that it improperly billed Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal healthcare programs for hundreds of thousands of insulin pens it knowingly dispensed to program beneficiaries who did not need them.

Price-fixing: StarKist Co. was sentenced to pay a criminal fine of $100 million, the statutory maximum, for its role in a conspiracy to fix prices for canned tuna sold in the United States. StarKist was also sentenced to a 13-month term of probation.

Employment Discrimination: Google’s parent company Alphabet agreed to pay $11 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging that it engaged in age discrimination in its hiring process.

Investor Protection Violation: State Street Bank and Trust Company agreed to pay over $88 million to the SEC to settle allegations of overcharging mutual funds and other registered investment company clients for expenses related to the firm’s custody of client assets.

Illegal Kickbacks: Mallinckrodt agreed to pay $15 million to resolve claims that Questcor Pharmaceuticals, which it acquired, paid illegal kickbacks to doctors, in the form of lavish dinners and entertainment, to induce them to write prescriptions for the company’s drug H.P. Acthar Gel.

Worker Misclassification: Uber Technologies agreed to pay $20 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it misclassified drivers as independent contractors to avoid complying with labor protection standards.

Accounting Fraud: KPMG agreed to pay $50 million to the SEC to settle allegations of altering past audit work after receiving stolen information about inspections of the firm that would be conducted by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The SEC also found that numerous KPMG audit professionals cheated on internal training exams by improperly sharing answers and manipulating test results.

Trade Violations: A subsidiary of Univar Inc. agreed to pay the United States $62 million to settle allegations that it violated customs regulations when it imported saccharin that was manufactured in China and transshipped through Taiwan to evade a 329 percent antidumping duty.

Consumer Protection Violation: As part of the settlement of allegations that it engaged in unfair and deceptive practices in connection with a 2017 data breach, Equifax agreed to provide $425 million in consumer relief and pay a $100 million civil penalty to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It also paid $175 million to the states.

Ocean Dumping: Princess Cruise Lines and its parent Carnival Cruises were ordered to pay a $20 million criminal penalty after admitting to violating the terms of their probation in connection with a previous case relating to illegal ocean dumping of oil-contaminated waste.

Additional details on these cases can be found in Violation Tracker, which now contains 397,000 civil and criminal cases with total penalties of $604 billion.

Note: I have just completed a thorough update of the Dirt Diggers Digest Guide to Strategic Corporate Research. I’ve added dozens of new sources (and fixed many outdated links) in all four of the guide’s parts: Key Sources of Company Information; Exploring A Company’s Essential Relationships; Analyzing A Company’s Accountability Record; and Industry-Specific Sources.

The Other Collusion

The Trump crowd may have escaped prosecution on charges of colluding with the Russians, but another case involving collusion is moving full steam ahead. Attorneys general from 43 states and Puerto Rico are pursuing a blockbuster lawsuit against the generic drug industry on charges of conspiring to artificially inflate and manipulate prices, reduce competition and unreasonably restrain trade for more than 100 different products.

Led by Connecticut Attorney General William Tong (photo), the coalition claims to have extensive evidence in the form of emails, text messages, telephone records, and statements from former company insiders documenting that 20 companies such as Teva, Sandoz and Mylan engaged in a “broad, coordinated and systematic campaign” to conspire with each other to generate prices increases that in some instances exceeded 1,000 percent.

The case, which could result in a multi-billion-dollar settlement, is a reminder that price-fixing, one of the oldest forms of corporate crime, remains a live issue. The main change is the method by which companies collude. Adam Smith’s discussion of the practice in The Wealth of Nations (1776) stated that “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Now the same results can be achieved electronically, without face-to-face encounters.

Price-fixing accounts for more of the federal criminal cases in Violation Tracker than any other offense type besides environmental matters. The 212 cases have resulted in $10 billion in penalties, including more than two dozen cases in which the defendants had to pay more than $100 million.

Many of those cases involve industries such as auto parts, electronic components and chemicals; in other words, business-to-business transactions. Federal antitrust prosecutors have focused much less on goods purchased by individual consumers.

That’s where the states come in. The current case against the generic drug companies is just the latest in a string of lawsuits in which state AGs have banded together to address anti-competitive practices that affect consumers.

We’re now in the process of collecting data on those cases to add to Violation Tracker. So far, we have identified more than 100 multistate lawsuits involving price-fixing and related matters. Quite a few of these involve drug and vitamin producers.

There have even been some brought against the same generic producers targeted in the new case. For example, in 2000 Mylan agreed to pay $108 million to settle multistate allegations that it conspired with other companies to control the market for generic anti-anxiety drugs.

The past and current allegations against companies such as Teva and Mylan are especially troubling because these generic producers were supposed to be the heroes of the drug industry. Instead of acting as a check on the avaricious impulses of the brand-name producers, it appears that they jumped on the profit-maximization bandwagon. This should serve as another indicator that market forces are not up to the task of eliminating price-gouging in the pharmaceutical industry. Strong government intervention is the only remedy.

Bumble Bee CEO Gets Stung

Corporate critics, myself included, have long complained about the unwillingness of federal authorities to hold top executives personally responsible for illicit practices at the businesses they run. It was thus surprising but encouraging to learn that the Justice Department Antitrust Division has gotten a grand jury to return an indictment against the chief executive of Bumble Bee Foods for participating in a conspiracy to fix prices of packaged seafood sold in the United States.

The case against Christopher Lischewski comes in the wake of the prosecution of the company itself, which last year agreed to pay a criminal fine of $25 million, which under certain circumstances could rise to more than $80 million. The investigation has also ensnared several other individuals, including two at Bumble Bee, which is owned by the British private equity firm Lion Capital, and one at rival Star Kist.

We can hope that these cases are a sign that the Trump Administration’s Antitrust Division is taking its job seriously. Since Trump took office, the division has announced several large penalties against foreign banks such as France’s BNP Paribas for manipulation of currency markets, but this was the continuation of an investigation that began under Obama.

Some other Trump era cases have been pretty minor, such as the $409,342 fine imposed on an e-commerce company for fixing the price of promotional wristbands.

Price manipulation relating to consumer and industrial products is a perennial form of corporate misconduct. It is one of the main business offenses that regularly involves criminal charges and results in guilty pleas.

In Violation Tracker we document 241 Antitrust Division cases against corporations that resulted in more than $10 billion in penalties. Looking at the list, one is struck by the fact that so many of the defendants are foreign firms, including 11 of the dozen biggest fines.

This is not to say that U.S. companies don’t fix prices. Probably the most famous price-fixing case ever was the conspiracy to manipulate the electrical equipment market by the likes of General Electric and Westinghouse in the 1950s. U.S. agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland was at the center of a lysine price fixing scandal in the 1990s.

It may be that in recent years federal antitrust prosecutors have felt pressure not to go after domestic companies, or else that foreign corporations are emboldened by the pro-business climate in the U.S. to engage in more brazen behavior.

In any event, at a time of unprecedented concentration of ownership in many U.S. industries, there is bound to be plenty of price collusion going on that needs to be investigated.

Federal Watchdog Agencies Still On Guard

Donald Trump likes to give the impression that he has made great strides in dismantling regulation. While there is no doubt that his administration and Republican allies in Congress are targeting many important safeguards for consumers and workers, the good news is that those protections in many respects are still alive and well.

This conclusion emerges from the data I have been collecting for an update of Violation Tracker that will be posted later this month. As a preview of that update, here are some examples of federal agencies that are still vigorously pursuing their mission of protecting the public.

Federal Trade Commission. In June the FTC, with the help of the Justice Department, prevailed in litigation against Dish Network over millions of illegal sales calls made to consumers in violation of Do Not Call regulations. The satellite TV provider was hit with $280 million in penalties.

Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA is a regulatory entity as well as a law enforcement agency. In July it announced that Mallinckrodt, one of the largest manufacturers of generic oxycodone, had agreed to pay $35 million to settle allegations that it violated the Controlled Substances Act by failing to detect and report suspicious bulk orders of the drug.

Federal Reserve. The Fed continues to take action against both domestic and foreign banks that fail to exercise adequate controls over their foreign exchange trading, in the wake of a series of scandals about manipulation of that market. The Fed imposed a fine of $136 million on Germany’s Deutsche Bank and $246 million on France’s BNP Paribas.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Last month the beleaguered CFPB ordered American Express to pay $95 million in redress to cardholders in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands for discriminatory practices against certain consumers with Spanish-language preferences.

Securities and Exchange Commission. In May the SEC announced that Barclays Capital would pay $97 million in reimbursements to customers who had been overcharged on mutual fund fees.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC announced that the Texas Roadhouse restaurant chain would pay $12 million to settle allegations that it discriminated against older employees by denying them front-of-the-house positions such as hosts, servers and bartenders.

Justice Department Antitrust Division. The DOJ announced that Nichicon Corporation would pay $42 million to resolve criminal price-fixing charges involving electrolytic capacitors.

Federal agencies are also finishing up cases dating back to the financial meltdown. For example, in July the Federal Housing Finance Agency said that it had reached a settlement under which the Royal Bank of Scotland will pay $5.5 billion to settle litigation relating to the sale of toxic securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And the National Credit Union Administration said that UBS would pay $445 million to resolve a similar case.

It remains to be seen whether federal watchdogs can continue to pursue these kinds of cases, but for now they are not letting talk of deregulation prevent them from doing their job.

Note: The new version of Violation Tracker will also include an additional ten years of coverage back to 2000.

The 2016 Corporate Rap Sheet

The two biggest corporate crime stories of 2016 were cases not just of technical lawbreaking but also remarkable chutzpah. It was bad enough, as first came to light in 2015, that Volkswagen for years installed “cheat devices” in many of its cars to give deceptively low readings on emissions testing.

Earlier this year it came out that the company continued to mislead U.S. regulators after they discovered the fraud. VW has agreed to pay out more than $15 billion in civil settlements but it is not yet clear what is going to happen in the ongoing criminal investigation.

Brazenness was also at the center of the revelation in August that employees at Wells Fargo, presumably under pressure from managers, created more than one million bogus accounts in order to generate fees from customers who had no idea what was going on. The story came out when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that the bank would pay $100 million to settle with the agency and another $85 million in related cases.

But that was just the beginning of the consequences for Wells. CEO John Stumpf was raked over the coals in House and Senate hearings, and he subsequently had to resign. Criminal charges remain a possibility.

The other biggest corporate scandal of the year involved drugmaker Mylan, which imposed steep price increases for its EpiPens, which deliver lifesaving treatment in severe allergy attacks. The increases had nothing to do with rising production costs and everything to do with boosting profits. The company’s CEO was also grilled by Congress, which however could do little about the price gouging.

Here are some of the other major cases of the year:

Toxic Securities. There is still fallout from the reckless behavior of the banks leading up to the 2008 financial meltdown. Goldman Sachs paid more than $5 billion to settle a case involving the packaging and sale of toxic securities, while Morgan Stanley paid $2.6 billion in a similar case.

Mortgage Fraud. Wells Fargo had to pay $1.2 billion to settle allegations that during the early 2000s it falsely certified that certain residential home mortgage loans were eligible for Federal Housing Administration insurance. Many of those loans later defaulted.

False Claims Act. Wyeth and Pfizer agreed to pay $784 million to resolve allegations that Wyeth (later acquired by Pfizer) knowingly reported to the government false and fraudulent prices on two of its proton pump inhibitor drugs.

Kickbacks. Olympus Corp. of the Americas, the largest U.S. distributor of endoscopes and related equipment, agreed to pay $623 million to resolve criminal charges and civil claims relating to a scheme to pay kickbacks to doctors and hospitals in the United States and Latin America.

Misuse of customer funds. Merrill Lynch, a subsidiary of Bank of America, agreed to pay $415 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that it misused customer cash to generate profits for the firm and failed to safeguard customer securities from the claims of its creditors.

Price-fixing. Japan’s Nishikawa Rubber Co. agreed to plead guilty and pay a $130 million criminal fine for its role in a conspiracy to fix the prices of and rig the bids for automotive body sealing products installed in cars sold to U.S. consumers.

Accounting fraud. Monsanto agreed to pay an $80 million penalty and retain an independent compliance consultant to settle allegations that it violated accounting rules and misstated company earnings pertaining to its flagship product Roundup.

Consumer deception. Herbalife agreed to fully restructure its U.S. business operations and pay $200 million to compensate consumers to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that the company deceived customers into believing they could earn substantial money selling diet, nutritional supplement, and personal care products.

Discriminatory practices. To resolve a federal discrimination case, Toyota Motor Credit Corp. agreed to pay $21.9 million in restitution to thousands of African-American and Asian and Pacific Islander borrowers who were charged higher interest rates than white borrowers for their auto loans, without regard to their creditworthiness.

Sale of contaminated products. B. Braun Medical Inc. agreed to pay $4.8 million in penalties and forfeiture and up to an additional $3 million in restitution to resolve its criminal liability for selling contaminated pre-filled saline flush syringes in 2007.

Pipeline spills. To resolve allegations relating to pipeline oil spills in Michigan and Illinois and 2010, Enbridge agreed to pay Clean Water Act civil penalties totaling $62 million and spend at least $110 million on a series of measures to prevent spills and improve operations across nearly 2,000 miles of its pipeline system in the Great Lakes region.

Mine safety. Donald Blankenship, former chief executive of Massey Energy, was sentenced to a year in prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards in a case stemming from the 2010 Upper Big Branch disaster that killed 29 miners.

Wage theft. A Labor Department investigation found that Restaurant Associates and a subcontractor operating Capitol Hill cafeterias violated the Service Contract Act by misclassifying employees and paying them for lower-wage work than they actually performed. The workers were awarded more than $1 million in back pay.

False advertising. For-profit DeVry University agreed to pay $100 million to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that it misled prospective students in ads touting the success of graduates.

Trump University. Shortly after being elected president, Donald Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle fraud allegations made by the New York State Attorney General and others concerning a real estate investment training course.

Remember: thousands of such cases can be found in the Violation Tracker database my colleagues and I at the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First produce. Look for expanded coverage in 2017.