Martin Shkreli, the former pharmaceutical executive who faces criminal securities fraud charges, is challenging a request from prosecutors to put a parallel civil case against him on hold, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. The civil case, brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, “jeopardizes Mr. Shkreli’s livelihood, reputation and future career prospects” and should move forward, his attorneys said in a court filing on Thursday. The lawyer charged along with Shkreli, Evan Greebel, also asked to allow some information-sharing to proceed in the SEC’s case. Shkreli, the 32-year-old biotechnology company founder who gained notoriety after raising the price of a rare drug by more than 5,000 percent, was arrested at his Manhattan apartment in December. He stands accused of illegally using assets in one of his former drug companies, Retrophin Inc., to pay off investors who lost money in hedge funds he ran. Defendants facing parallel civil and criminal securities cases sometimes seek to move forward on both fronts to get a glimpse of the prosecution’s evidence. Civil cases are usually put on hold, though, at the government’s request.
