ICN Stock Dips as Government Raises Heat

Shares of ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. slipped 8.8% Thursday as word spread among investors that the federal government has turned up the heat on the Costa Mesa drug company.

The stock fell $2.31 a share in moderately active trading on the New York Stock Exchange to close at $24. ICN disclosed last week that the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles has stepped up a 2-year-old grand jury investigation into matters such as possible insider trading by the company’s chairman, Milan Panic, in 1994.

In the filing last Friday, the company also disclosed that the grand jury has widened its probe to include possible violations of the U.S. economic embargo on Yugoslavia through alleged stock sales by Panic and the company. The grand jury also is looking into Panic’s sales of assets associated with Yugoslavia and possible omissions or misstatements in federal tax filings.

The company and Panic--a U.S. citizen who served as prime minister of Yugoslavia during that country’s transition from Communist rule--maintain they have done nothing wrong.