A pharmaceutical executive who sparked international
outrage when his firm raised the price of a drug used to treat AIDS patients to
$750-per-pill was revealed Wednesday to have bought a single record by the
hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan for $2 million.
Bloomberg reported that Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing
Pharmaceuticals, had purchased the only extant copy of the album "Once
Upon A Time in Shaolin". The album, which was produced last year, includes
31 tracks and a leatherbound 174-page book filled with lyrics and background
information on the songs.
When the auction was announced in March 2014, Wu-Tang
Clan producer RZA described the album as "a piece of art like nobody else
has done in the history of music. We're making a single-sale collector's item.
This is like someone having the scepter of an Egyptian king."
In response to Bloomberg's report that Shkreli had bought
the album, RZA issued a statement to the magazine that said, "The sale of
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was agreed upon in May, well before Martin
Skhreli’s [sic] business practices came to light. We decided to give a
significant portion of the proceeds to charity."
Shkreli caused an uproar in September after news broke
that Turing increased by more than 5,000 percent the price of Daraprim, a drug
used to treat a life-threatening infection, jacking it up from $13.50 to $750
per pill.
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