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Indivior shares crash after US indictment over opioid scheme

Shares in pharmaceutical business Indivior have fallen by 72% on news that it has been indicted in the US.

The company, which trades on the FTSE 250 and is based in Slough, is accused of engaging in an illegal scheme to boost prescriptions of its opioid addiction treatment.

The treatment, called suboxone film, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2010 and used by people recovering from opioid dependency.

According to Indivior's website, suboxone film was shipped to the US, Malaysia and Australia in 2016.

Opioids, which include legal painkillers morphine, oxycodone, or hydrocodone prescribed by doctors for acute or chronic pain, as well as illegal drugs heroin and fentanyl, were involved in almost 48,000 deaths in 2017 across the US, according to official estimates.

An indictment filed in federal court in Virginia alleges Indivior made billions of dollars by deceiving doctors and healthcare benefit programmes into believing their drug was safer and less susceptible to abuse than others.

The court documents also say the firm launched a phone line for patients to call to talk with doctors about opioid dependence or addiction treatment but used this to connect patients only with doctors it knew were prescribing suboxone and other opioids in a "careless and clinically unwarranted manner".

Indivior faces charges of conspiracy, health care fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud and could be made to forfeit at least $3bn (£2.29bn) if convicted.

Indivior said in a statement it was "extremely disappointed" by the department's decision to charge it.

The indictment was "wholly unsupported by either the facts or the law", a spokesman said.

Before the indictment was announced, Indivior had been in settlement talks with the Department of Justice and had set aside more than $400m to cover legal matters such as this investigation.

But the firm said: "The department has apparently decided it would rather pursue self-serving headlines on a matter of national significance than achieve an appropriate resolution."

The company is the latest to find itself in the dock amid an opioids epidemic in the US.

Last month, pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma reached a $270m (£204m) settlement with the state of Oklahoma over its role in the crisis .

The company had made billions of dollars from sales of prescription painkiller OxyContin but has been hit with nearly 2,000 lawsuits from state and local governments across the US.

Indivior was spun off from health and hygiene conglomerate Reckitt Benckiser in 2014, four years after the alleged fraud began.

Reckitt said in a stock market announcement: "This indictment is not against RB group plc or any other group company and we currently have no additional or new information in respect of this matter, apart from what has been publicly issued by the Department of Justice and Indivior plc."

Shares in Reckitt fell more than 6%.