CENCORA INC

Lobbying disclosures from Q1 and Q2 2025 show Cencora spent hundreds of thousands of dollars targeting the FDA and Labor/HHS appropriations. Key focus areas include "Supply Chain Resiliency" and "DSCSA Implementation"—legislation designed to track drugs. Critics argue this lobbying is intended to secure "safe harbor" provisions that limit distributor liability for counterfeit or diverted drugs.

Cencora Inc., formerly AmerisourceBergen, operates as a major pharmaceutical wholesale and distribution company. The company has a documented pattern of regulatory violations across multiple domains, indicating systemic compliance failures. In February 2024, Cencora disclosed a significant data breach, which led to a $40 million settlement in related litigation finalized in August 2025. This incident followed a separate, ongoing lawsuit filed in May 2025 alleging widespread wage and hour violations in California, including failure to provide adequate rest periods and minimum wages.

The pattern extends beyond labor and data security. ViolationTracker documents additional enforcement actions against the company. While individual penalties may be statutorily capped, the recurrence of violations across distinct regulatory areas—workplace standards, data privacy, and securities disclosure—demonstrates a concerning failure to implement adequate internal controls. This multi-domain pattern meets the threshold for exclusion based on regulatory failures.

Cencora is currently paying out a $6.4 billion nationwide settlement (agreed in 2022, active through 2040) to resolve thousands of lawsuits alleging it failed to maintain effective controls against the diversion of prescription opioids. As of late 2025, federal courts have allowed certain additional "bellwether" cases to proceed, suggesting the company’s legal liability for the epidemic remains an active, non-finalized risk.