'Pharma bro' offers Kayne West $10m for new album

Martin Shkreli is willing to pay $10 million for Kayne West's latest album. Photo / Bloomberg

Notorious pharmaceuticals businessman Martin Shkreli has offered Kanye West $10 million to buy his album -- but there's a catch -- he doesn't want it released publicly.

The 'world's most hated CEO' tweeted Kanye West the offer, sending a letter requesting that he only be contacted by Twitter direct message.

Following a series of tweets, Shkreli claimed Kanye and his label were legally obliged to take his letter to their board of directors.

Kayne West staged a fashion and music spectacular at New York's Madison Square Garden where models including Naomi Campbell and Alek Wek showed off his new collection to a soundtrack of his long-awaited album, The Life of Pablo LP.

Shkreli stirred public outrage late last year when his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, jacked the price of a drug used to treat a life-threatening infection by more than 5000 percent.

In December he purchased the Wu-Tang Clan album "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," the uber-exclusive, single-copy work that only one person can own.

Bloomberg Businessweek reported that Shkreli parted with $2 million in exchange for the album.

As well as being charged for a series of securities fraud and brought before the "imbeciles" of Congress for jacking up the price of life-saving drugs, a former Wu-Tang artist, Jason Koza, has sued Shkreli, record producers Robert "RZA" Diggs and Tarik "Cilvaringz" Azzougarh, and Paddle8, the online auction startup hired to sell the one-of-a-kind album that uses nine potraits of former band members without permission.

- with additional reporting from AP, Bloomberg and Washington Post.