Martin Shkreli Ousted from CEO’s Post at KaloBios

Turing announced on Friday that Shkreli has resigned as the company’s CEO and it had appointed a new interim chief executive.

USA authorities brought charges against Shkreli on Thursday. “The charges against me are baseless and without merit”, Shkreli, who is free on $5 million bond, tweeted on Saturday.

Shkreli and Tony Chase also resigned from the board of directors, the drugmaker said Monday in a statement.

UC Davis and the Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida, which were running a clinical trial for a KaloBios drug to treat a form of leukemia, have suspended the trials “pending further analysis”, according to Bloomberg”. Its shares tumbled 70 percent in January after its drug for lung infections failed in testing. Shkreli founded the company early in 2011 and was sued by Retrophin and fired last fall after his alleged misappropriations were revealed. He’s also remained active on social media, live streaming hours of his more mundane activities, such as playing chess and talking on the phone, and tweeting claims of innocence.

The KaloBios ouster marks the latest setback for the 32-year-old healthcare industry entrepreneur who has drawn widespread criticism for imposing steep price hikes in the cost of drugs controlled by his companies.

His tenure at KaloBios was particularly brief, as he had taken over as chief executive only on November 19. Since his arrest, the trading of the stocks has been halted.

Shkreli recently became the CEO of a second company, KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, Inc., based in South San Francisco, California. Not only that he has received several major charges of securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy all in relation to a hedge fund endeavor.

KaloBios, which has a market cap of less than United States dollars 100 million, hasn’t traded since last Thursday. That’s because Shkreli’s Twitter account had reportedly been hacked.

The FBI has accused Mr Shkreli of using assets from his former company, Retrophin, to illegally pay off debts at MSMB, the hedge fund he managed. First, the “pharma bro” said he wished he raised the prices of the drug Daraprim – which he caused to go up from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill – even higher.