Four US drug companies have made settlements with the US Department of Justice and agreed to pay $124m (£75m; €84m) to resolve false claims that they submitted to the US Medicaid programme after a whistleblower complained.

The companies were Mylan Pharmaceuticals and UDL Laboratories, which paid $118m; Astra Zeneca, which paid $2.6m; and Ortho McNeil, which paid $3.4m.

The amount recovered by the US government will be shared between the federal government, the states, the Public Health Service’s drug pricing programme, and the whistleblower.

“The [US federal] False Claims Act allows a citizen [a whistleblower] to bring fraud to the attention of the government. …