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Vitamin Cartel?
Anyone know anything about the Roche vitamin cartel? I never thought prices for vitamins could be manipulated like energy can...but what do I know. Wikipedia isn't much help on this topic.
Does this mean essentially that all vitamins come from just a few sources and that brand names don't matter since you're getting the same stuff no matter which brand you buy?
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(excerpt lifted from Wikipedia)
Vitamin price-fixing
In 1973, Stanley Adams, Roche's World Product Manager in Basel, contacted the European Economic Community with evidence that Roche had been breaking anti-trust laws, engaging in price-fixing and market sharing with its competitors. Roche was fined accordingly, but a bungle on the part of the EEC allowed the company to discover that it was Adams who had blown the whistle. He was arrested for unauthorized disclosure - an offense under Swiss law - and imprisoned. His wife, having learned that he might face decades in jail, committed suicide. Adams was released soon after but arrested again more than once before eventually fleeing to Britain, where he wrote a book about the affair, Roche Versus Adams (London 1984, ISBN 022402180X).
In 1999 Roche was the world-wide market leader in vitamins, with a market share of 40%. Between 1990 and 1999, the company participated in an illegal price fixing cartel for vitamins. Other members of the cartel were BASF and Rhone-Poulenc SA. In 1999, Roche pleaded guilty in the United States and paid a $500 million fine, then the largest fine ever secured in the U.S. The European Commission fined Roche 462 million euros for the same infraction in 2001, also a record fine at the time.
Roche sold its vitamin business in late 2002 to the Dutch group DSM.
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