Sackler Family Pulled Billions From Purdue Pharma As Opioid Crisis Mounted
The family that owns Purdue Pharma
pulled billions of dollars from the company after introducing its signature opioid medication,
OxyContin, growing personally wealthy as the heavily marketed drug took on a significant role in a nationwide addiction crisis.
An audit commissioned by Purdue, and introduced Monday during the company’s bankruptcy proceedings, found that the Sackler family withdrew more than $12.2 billion from the company since federal regulators approved the sale of OxyContin in the mid-1990s.
Roughly $10.7 billion of that sum
was pulled since the start of 2008, after several Purdue executives had already pleaded guilty to misleading regulators and consumers about the drug’s risks.
The findings
are sure to be of interest to prosecutors and the drugmaker’s creditors, who are trying to determine just how much the Sacklers and their company are capable of paying to help mitigate an addiction crisis that has caused more than 200,000 overdose deaths and cost an estimated tens of billions.
NPR
Sacklers withdrew $10bn from Purdue, audit shows – BBC News