Republican gubernatorial nominee in Ohio Vivek Ramaswamy is facing hard “questions” over his past conduct related to a biopharmaceutical company, conduct that one expert suggested bore all the hallmarks of a classic “pump and dump” scheme.
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Ramaswamy bought the rights to a failed Alzheimer’s drug in 2014 through his company Axovant, then hired his mother – who had no clinical trial experience – to reanalyze the failed data. That reanalysis helped Axovant raise $315 million in a 2015 initial public offering. Ramaswamy cashed out through a private deal in 2017, just weeks before the drug failed its final trial and the stock crashed 70%.
“That’s where people have a lot of questions, whenever you kind of pump and dump something,” said Daniel Skinner, a professor of health policy at Ohio University, speaking with Oligarch Watch for a report published Friday. “You look back at his words, and he was extremely effusive – really right up to the very end – about the prospects of this working.”
While speculation surrounding Ramaswamy’s conduct as it relates to the failed Alzheimer’s drug has persisted for years, David Niven, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati, argued the incident could pose serious trouble for the gubernatorial hopeful come November.
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“One of the defining questions of the campaign will be, are Ohioans talking about this in October – are they aware of how well he did, and how poorly most other folks did on that Alzheimer’s drug?” Niven told Oligarch Watch.
“[The reality of how Ramaswamy ran Axovant] was heads I win and tails I also win, in terms of the outcomes of the trials or whether the drugs actually proved useful or not.”
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