Who Paid The Largest Criminal Fine In History and Why?

Pfizer is a vaccination producer for COVID and United States pharmaceutical shark and is one of the many companies paid billions of dollars as criminal fines recently – However, which company paid the biggest fine worldwide?

As regulators all over the world try to catch up with corporations in industries like healthcare, finance, technology, and many others. Heavy fines are highly becoming a most dependable way to stop big companies from filling their pockets with a high amount of money.

Next, we will be talking about the largest criminal fines that were paid in history, which companies were fined and why?

A company that paid the largest criminal fine

Pfizer is one of the corporations that has been claimed as a company paying the biggest criminal fine in the past time – with the Pharma Corporation going against United States regulators in the year 2009.

Note that some other companies have paid out heavier fines before and after Pfizer.

There is another corporation known as Tepco, which stands for Tokyo Electric Power Co, which was ordered to pay around $391 billion in compensation to Fukushima disaster victims in the year 2011.

The meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in Japan became part of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in March in the year 2011 and was the most critical disaster of nuclear since Chornobyl’s nuclear meltdown catastrophe in the year 1986.

An investigation started for disaster took place in Fukushima, and found out three chief executives of Tepco Corporation were found guilty and charged with failing to make sure that all requirements for safety were completed – Not only that, also a Japanese parliamentary report shows that the incident was man made.

After a while, those three Tepco chief executives were cleared of dereliction for the safety precautions, but the corporation was still forced to pay a fine of more than $355 billion in compensation to sufferers.

There is another corporate shark known as British Petroleum (BP) who were also charged with a criminal fine of around $3.3 billion in the year 2012 for its main role in the oil spill of Deepwater Horizon located in the Gulf of Mexico, but after a while, the compensation amount was raised to around $55 billion.

The oil spill incident in the year 2010 was claimed to be one of the most horrible ecological disasters of all time, around 11 people died and a criminal fine from United States regulators of around 4.5 billion US Dollars.

Later on, it was exposed by Buzzfeed that British Petroleum only paid 25 million US Dollars to Mexico in compensation for the damages caused.

Well, there is also a bank on our corporation’s highest fine list, ‘The Bank of America’ who has been fined and paid around 82.7 Billion US Dollars from the year 2000, on the report of Diggity Marketing, they also paid around 13 billion US Dollars for having a role and causing damages in the year 2008 when financial crash and crisis took place.

What was the amount of Pfizer’s criminal fine and why were they ordered to pay?

The criminal fine of around 2 billion US dollars was imposed on Pfizer in the year 2009 and was noticeably lesser than the heavy fines ordered on corporations like Bank of America, Tepco, and British Petroleum, the fine imposed still set a record as the biggest fraud on healthcare and criminal fine till now.

Pfizer was ordered by US regulators agencies to pay the fine after the corporation was found to be involved in fraud by misguiding – a withdrawn painkiller known as ‘Bextra’.

The company was found guilty of advertising the medicines for ‘off-label’ purposes which were not approved and weren’t cleared by the US Food & Drug Administration.

Pfizer stopped releasing Bextra into the market in the year 2005, but the corporation promoted the drug for dosages which the Food & Drug Authority rejected for safety concerns over the medication.

Industries that paid the largest fines

According to Diggity Marketing, financial services industries are accountable for the most fines till now.

As of February in the year 2021, the division including payment providers and banks had jammed up fines of around 330 billion US dollars with more than 6,000 fines overall.

The pharmaceutical corporation was behind with around 940 fines total amount of around 56 billion dollars, whereas the oil and gas industries ranked third with around 45 billion dollars in fines.

With the companies paying the fines, the Bank of America is on top and JPMorgan Chase is in the second spot on the list of companies that paid the largest fines. JPMorgan paid around 35 billion Dollars as fines.