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COPYRIGHT 2003 Chicago Tribune
Byline: Bruce Japsen
A Chicago-area whistleblower's disclosure about illegal competition between two drug makers culminated Friday in a guilty plea by a British pharmaceutical giant.
London-based AstraZeneca PLC signed an agreement with the Justice Department to pay a $355 million penalty and plead guilty to a criminal charge of conspiring with doctors to bill government insurers for free samples of its prostate cancer drug, Zoladex.
The settlement comes less than two years after AstraZeneca's main rival, Lake Forest, Ill.-based TAP Pharmaceutical Products Inc., pleaded guilty to a similar charge involving its prostate cancer drug, Lupron, and agreed to pay $875 million in criminal and civil fraud penalties.
Douglas Durand, 51, a former TAP vice president of sales, led government investigators...
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