“Through phone calls, text messages, emails, corporate
    conventions, and cozy dinner parties, generic
    pharmaceutical executives were in constant communication,
    colluding to fix prices and restrain competition”

These things were done by people. Everyone who participated in this _personally_ conspired to commit a crime. Of course this is probably not how it will be seen in the eyes of the legal system.

It will be seen that way - people have gone to jail for antitrust stuff. Especially if one person flips on the others. Is it guaranteed to happen? No, but it might, and it has before.

If a law was broken by a corporation, how could at least one person in that corporation not be guilty of breaking that law? Was it the corporation's AI that did it?

Ethics laundering. Like money laundering.

Well, management responsibility is regulated under CFR 21 820 for medical devices. There are equivalent regulations for pharma.

Executives do go to (probation it turns out and apparently not jail all the time) because their company broke the law and they're responsible for the company.

https://www.uspharmacist.com/article/new-fda-strategy-crimin...

That’s one part, the other part is the government has to have a preponderance of evidence of wrongdoing.

Courts and lawyers don’t just take the word of the government as ironclad word of god and pronounce judgement.

Is it seedy, do people do things to hide evidence, do they go to the edge of the law? Yes of course, but the state still has to prove it’s case.

In the Syprine case, the company was convicted of price fixing by the US supreme court. The company changed its name and then just continued with the same business practices. No hands were really slapped.

Companies are made up of people - so if the company you control breaks the law, you have personally broken the law.