Bill Clinton has touted the efforts of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) to distribute AIDS drugs in the Third World as proof that the ongoing criminal conspiracy that is the web of non-profits associated with Bill and Hillary Clinton and their cronies have actually done something other than serve as a money laundering device to enrich the Clintons. As usual, when you look at the facts of anything dealing with the Clintons, there is much more half-truth and untruth than fact.

The centerpiece of the CHAI scheme was an AIDS drug produced by the Indian pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy. As early as 2004, the drug produced by Ranbaxy was under suspicion and in 2006 the FDA sent a warning letter to the company telling it that it had major quality control issues. If you are wondering why the US FDA would warn an Indian company it is because CHAI was using hundreds of millions of dollars of US money appropriated under President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The problem with the Ranbaxy drug was simple. It was adulterated, ‘watered down’, so the company could sell more drugs while minimizing manufacturing expenses. As the primary recipients of the watered down AIDS drug were indignent peoples in Third World nations, the odds of them complaining seemed rather small… and using the CHAI flogged drug, they’d be dying pretty soon anyway.

Via The Daily Caller:

Ranbaxy ultimately pleaded guilty in 2013 to seven criminal counts with intent to defraud and the introduction of adulterated drugs into interstate commerce.

The Department of Justice further levied a $500 million fine and forfeiture on the company.

“This is the largest false claims case ever prosecuted in the District of Maryland, and the nation’s largest financial penalty paid by a generic pharmaceutical company,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein when Ranbaxy pleaded guilty.

“When companies sell adulterated drugs, they undermine the integrity of the FDA’s approval process and may cause patients to take drugs that are substandard, ineffective, or unsafe,” said Stuart F. Delery, acting assistant attorney general for the civil division of the Department of Justice, when the government announced its action against the Indian company.

Even as Ranbaxy was pleading guilty to a massive fraud that undoubtedly cause thousands of lives and untold misery, Bill Clinton was praising the company:

Former US president Bill Clinton praised Indian generic drug companies such as Ranbaxy and Cipla for their stellar contribution in the fight against the HIV/AIDS scourge, saying their cheap drugs saved millions of lives.

Like so much else concerning the Clinton’s, the truth is much uglier than you could have imagined. There is no way of tracing donations from the people in the corporate management of Ranbaxy to the Clinton Foundation, but it would be a safe bet that some of the money that company received by its unique relationship with the Clinton Foundation rubbed off on the Clintons at some point.