Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) will pay $135 million to the State of Illinois to settle a lawsuit for fraud filed in 2005, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has announced. Illinois charged that the Israeli pharmaceutical giant and 46 other pharmaceutical companies had defrauded its Medicaid program by inflating wholesale prices of its prescription drugs. The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, alleged that various drugmakers had misreported what pharmacies paid for their drugs. RELATED ARTICLES Teva to produce new complex drugs outside Israel Teva settles with Amgen on hyperparathyroidism drug Teva agrees settlement with Neos on ADHD drug Teva could be hit by huge fine on US cartel probe Teva said in response,"In order to focus on providing important and affordable treatments to patients, Teva and Watson decided to reach a settlement in these suits to prevent continuing litigation. The company continues to strenuously deny these allegations by the State and this suit and presented siginifcant evdience in court to show that Illinois was completely aware of the pharmaceutical industry's approach regarding reporting average wholesale prices and consequently did not suffer any damage." Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 13, 2019 © Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2019