OxyContin-pushing Sackler billionaires demand ‘the benefit of bankruptcy without the burdens’

The extremely private family that made billions from the sale of OxyContin is threatening to back out of bankruptcy negotiations that could potentially expose the depth of its corruption.

The Sacklers are the owners of Purdue Pharma, a multi-billion-dollar company built on profits from OxyContin and opioid addiction. Ars Technica reports that the family is trying to figure out a way to ensure that it also receives the same personal protection from civil lawsuits as its OxyContin factory. It wants these assurances so badly that it is allegedly threatening to end the multi-billion-dollar cash settlement that its lawyers proposed to state attorneys general a month ago.

Facing over 2,000 lawsuits, Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy and reportedly proposed a multi-billion-dollar deal that would turn the company into a public trust. The $10-12 billion deal also meant that the Sackler family might have to part with up to $4 billion of its own money. The family is reportedly worth $13 billion; Purdue Pharma itself is said to have raked in over $35 billion by feeding OxyContin to the world. By filing for bankruptcy, Purdue Pharma frees itself from the threat of civil lawsuits, though state attorneys general can still file claims against the company.

Sackler family members, meanwhile, are not filing for bankruptcy—why would they, with an estimated net worth of $13 billion? Melissa Jacoby, a bankruptcy law expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Ars Technica the reason the Sackler family doesn’t want to file for bankruptcy is that it would require opening up its books, revealing potentially dubious dealings with Purdue. In essence, Jacoby says, the Sacklers “want the benefit of bankruptcy without the burdens of bankruptcy.” 

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Purdue and the Sacklers, as far back as 2008, were told that the way to “diversify their risk is to distribute more free cash flow to themselves.” Just a week earlier, the New York attorney general’s office had revealed that it had “uncovered about $1 billion in wire transfers between the Sackler family … and international financial institutions, suggesting the family sought to shield its wealth in overseas bank accounts.” Trying to reduce one’s risk is one thing, but trying to get away with billions in dollars of bloody opiate money is an entirely different kind of evil.

The reality is that, while $10 billion is a lot of money, it does not touch the hundreds of billions that the government estimates the opioid crisis has cost. Between 1999 and 2017, almost half a million people are believed to have died due to opioid-related addiction. That number, of course, doesn’t include the millions of Americans still dealing with opioid addiction, still dealing with recovery, still dealing with prison sentences, still dealing with the shattered pieces of lives lost and sidetracked by the opioid crisis. No matter how many lawsuits the Sacklers might face, there’s no amount of money that will ever undo that damage.

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