The Australian Securities and Investments Commission is taking Holista CollTech and its CEO Dr Rajendran Marnickavasagar to Federal Court for allegedly stating its sanitiser products kill Covid-19.
According to ASIC, Marnickavasagar claimed in a YouTube video last year that the firm’s ‘NatShield’ sanitiser spray killed the coronavirus pathogen ‘involved in the current Wuhan outbreak’, which was later renamed Covid-19.
Orders for the product surged after the outbreak, according to BioSpectrum.
ASIC alleges the business hadn’t tested the product against Covid-19, and only tested it against a feline coronavirus surrogate at Covid-19 at a later date.
Holista also allegedly misled the market when it said Health Therapies LLC had bought up $3.8 million worth of NatShield, 415,000 bottles, which was not true, and later said it would be unable to meet this ‘order’ and that its expected revenue for the product would now be $500,000 as a result.
“ASIC continues to focus on suspected misleading statements made to the market during the pandemic,” ASIC deputy chair Sarah Court said.
“In this case, we are concerned by the allegedly misleading claims, made when there were concerns about a potential pandemic, that NatShield was effective against [Covid-19] when it had not been tested against that virus.”
Holista CollTech went in to a trading halt yesterday in preparation of the announcement.
ASIC is seeking declarations and pecuniary penatlies from the business and Marnickavasagar, and seeks to ban Marnickavasagar from managing a corporation moving forward.
The case echoes one made against activewear brand Lorna Jane last year, which ended with the Federal Court fining the business $5 million for stating its products protected against Covid-19 – something it had no scientific backing or basis to claim.
The judge called the business’ actions “exploitative, predatory and potentially dangerous”, according to the ACCC, which took Lorna Jane to court over the claims in December 2020.
