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The Real Dope Dealers: 5 Things To Know About How The Sackler Family Shifted $10.8B Of An Opioid Empire Built On OxyContin

The Real Dope Dealers: 5 Things To Know About How The Sackler Family Shifted $10.8B Of An Opioid Empire Built On OxyContin

opioid
The Real Dope Dealers: 5 Things To Know About How The Sackler Family Shifted $10.8B Of An Opioid Empire Built On OxyContin. https://moguldom.com/258046/missouris-opioid-epidemic-hits-african-americans-hardest-especially-in-st-louis/ Photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash

The opioid crisis in America was already bad, and during pandemic has only intensified it. Cities from Washington to Arizona and Florida are reporting an increase in drug fatalities this year, according to data collected by The Wall Street Journal. Most experts expect it will be higher than last year’s record number of deadly overdoses, with more than 72,000 people killed, according to federal projections.

At the center of the crisis is the popular painkiller drug OxyContin. The makers of the drug Purdue Pharma, which is run by the Sackler family, a family that has come under fire for hiding the riches they made off the drug.

Three doctors — brothers Arthur (d. 1987), Mortimer (d. 2010), Raymond Sackler — founded Purdue Pharma in 1952 after taking over a small, struggling New York drug manufacturer. In 1995 it began selling OxyContin, a long-lasting, narcotic pain reliever. By 2003 Purdue Pharma was selling $1.6 billion of the product annually, Forbes reported. 

Today, Purdue Pharma is still 100-percent Sackler family-owned and generates some $3 billion in sales in the U.S. There are also separate Sackler-owned companies that sell drugs in Europe, Canada, Asia, and Latin America. In all, there are an estimated 20 family members share the fortune.

They have amassed enormous wealth, but in the end is the Sackler family the real dope dealers?

Here are five this to know about the Sackler family and how they shifted a whopping $10.8 billion of their opioid empire built on OxyContin.

Gone bankrupt?

By 2019 more than 130 people were dying daily from opioid overdoses in the U.S., and Purdue Pharma faced thousands of lawsuits for its role in the epidemic, Bloomberg reported.

So, in September 2019 Purdue Pharma declared bankruptcy to short-circuit the lawsuits. But it seems the company was far from bankrupt. They just shifted their fortune.

Moving money

Years before filing for bankruptcy, Purdue and its subsidiaries moved billions to companies ultimately registered in Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands, and Delaware, Bloomberg reported. Between 2008 and 2017, $10.8 billion was moved from Purdue into numerous subsidiaries via hundreds of transactions.

Unstacking the money

After tax bills of $1.7 billion were settled, the bulk of the money the family moved from Purdue wound up in two Delaware companies, Rosebay Medical Co. and Beacon Co., Bloomberg reported.

Another three companies—Linarite, Perthlite, and Banela—got dividends of a few million each.

International entities also got Purdue cash. “More than $1 billion ended up in independent associated entities registered in Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands. An additional $570 million was sent to Mundipharma International Ltd., the Sacklers’ global pharmaceutical arm,” Bloomberg reported.

Investigation

New York State Attorney General Letitia James’s office has vowed to looking into the Sacklers handling of Purdue’s revenue. According to James,  the Sacklers have hidden billions of dollars. She’s subpoenaed at least 10 financial institutions connected to the family “in an effort to establish the Sacklers’ fraud,” according to her office. The subpoenas allege that some of the $4.4 billion was used for multimillion-dollar real estate transactions, Bloomberg reported.

Marketing mayhem

When Purdue Pharma started selling its prescription opioid painkiller OxyContin in 1996, Dr. Richard Sackler announced to a gathering of family and friends that the debut of the drug “will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition,” CNBC reported.

That turned out to be more than true, but when overdoses started adding up the marketing techniques of the company were called into question.

Sackler’s comments at the party were actually used against the company in a lawsuit filed by the state of Massachusetts in 2018 that alleged that the company, the Sackler family, and company executives misled prescribers and patients.

The state’s suit focused on Purdue’s actions since 2007 when the company and three current and former executives pleaded guilty in federal court to fraudulently marketing OxyContin and the company at that time agreed to pay $600 million in fines. 

The Massachusetts lawsuit against Purdue Pharma accuses the company of sparking the opioid epidemic through the deceptive marketing of its painkillers, including OxyContin, Stat News reported.     

Besides the ongoing Massachusetts lawsuit against Purdue Pharma, there are numerous others across the country. In fact, 48 states are suing the company.

Last summer, the Sackler family and their drugmaker, Purdue Pharma LP, are backing a proposal to resolve all opioid lawsuits against themselves and the company for more than $11 billion, Bloomberg reported. But the states are split between rejecting and accepting it. 

Under the plan, the Sacklers themselves would foot $3 billion but would deny responsibility for the opioid crisis. James has said New York would oppose “any deal that cheats Americans out of billions of dollars” and “allows the Sacklers to evade responsibility.”