Insys Founder’s Protege Was ‘Fall Guy’ When Opioid Plan Faltered
- Ex-CEO is star government witness in Kapoor racketeering trial
- Babich got rich, but took ‘more crap’ from Kapoor than anyone
John Kapoor departs court in Boston on Jan. 29.
Photographer: Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
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Working for opioid maker Insys Therapeutics Inc. had its perks for Michael Babich. Hired at 25 years old by founder John Kapoor in 2001, Babich was the chief executive officer a decade later and earning tens of millions of dollars.
But by November 2015, when federal authorities began investigating Insys for allegedly bribing doctors to prescribe its highly addictive drug, Subsys, and the company’s shares were plunging, Kapoor unloaded his protege, Babich said Thursday during the second week of his former boss’s racketeering trial in Boston.