It's Thursday, May 20th. I'm David Brancaccio. A pair of global pharmaceutical companies today agreed to pay nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in fines for what the U.S. Justice Department is calling an international conspiracy to fix and raise the price of vitamins.
Authorities say the vitamin cartel hit the pocketbook of virtually every U.S. consumer.
James Jones reports from Marketplace's Washington bureau. These companies set artificially high prices for vitamins used to enrich a wide range of food products, including milk and cereal. Attorney General Janet Reno. Every American consumer paid to eat or drink or use a product whose price was artificially inflated. Joel Klein, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division says the illegal operation was finely tuned.