The Treasury Department of the United States of America has not accepted to give a response to the request of Ron Wyden, Senator of the United States, for some of the details of the financial arrangements between the drugmaker from Switzerland, Novartis AG, and President of the United States Donald Trump’s infamous legal counsellor, Michael Cohen, Bloomberg News reports a spokeswoman for the Democratic Senator and lawmaker said.
On the other hand, Novartis is said to be cooperating fully, and is said to have given “substantial” responses in reply to the letter of Senator Wyden, who sent the chief executive f the whole company in the month before June, according to an email that Bloomberg News reports to have been from the Senator from Oregon’s office on Wednesday. As you must all know by now, the probe is led by Democrats, and before it can become formalized, it needs Republicans to join.
While Michael Cohen has signaled that he might be ready to cooperate, there have been no such signals from the current administration, President Donald Trump’s White House, which according to the spokeswoman mentioned in the very first paragraph, “continues to be radio silent,” she is said to have said according to Bloomberg News reporting.
This probe is said to be following the revelations of last month that the Swiss drugmaker Novartis had made a payment of $1.2 million to Cohen’s firm as a part of a one-year agreement beginning in February 2017 that was reputedly aimed at attaining some degree of insight into the administration’s’ healthcare policy. The new Chief Executive Officer of Novartis, Vas Narasimhan, has been struggling to deal with backwash from the contract, which meant that Novartis AG had to become involved in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe which is looking into the suspected Russian meddling in the most recent presidential election of the United States of America in 2016.
According to Bloomberg news, Senator Wyden had asked Van Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis AG, to give an explanation as to what exactly Novartis AG was hoping to gain from making such a contract with Michael Cohen’s firm. Novartis responded by saying that, at the time of the contract, it was hoping to get the negotiation and approval of a specific payment deal with the United States Government for a drug that treats cancer called Kymriah that was listed at a price of $475,000. All of which was included in Senator Wyden’s letter.
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