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.
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.
“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.”