Purdue Pharma paid out US$10.4 billion to Sacklers as opioid crisis hit

Purdue Pharma headquarters in Stamford. Photo / AP

The wealthy owners of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma started taking far more money out of the company after it was fined for misleading marketing of the powerful prescription painkiller.

A court filing made by the company on Monday evening shows Purdue made payments for the benefit of members of the Sackler family who own the company totaling US$10.7 billion from 2008 through 2017. That includes taxes and other payments. Family members received US$4.1 billion in cash over that period. By contrast, distributions for the benefit of family members from 1995 through 2007 totalled US$1.3 billion.

At least a half-dozen companies that make or distribute prescription opioid painkillers are facing a federal criminal investigation. Photo / AP

The total amount family members received from the company was made public in a filing in October, but the new report offers new details on when the money was distributed.

"Today's report confirms what we revealed in our lawsuit: The Sacklers pocketed billions of dollars from Purdue while thousands of people died from their addictive drugs. This is the very definition of ill-gotten gains," Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, the first attorney general to sue Sackler family members, said in a statement.

The Sacklers' wealth has received intense scrutiny from Healey and 23 other states attorneys general who are objecting to a plan to settle some 2700 lawsuits against Purdue over the toll of opioids, including those filed by nearly every state.

The objecting attorneys general say that the settlement does not do enough to hold the family accountable for an opioid crisis linked to more than 400,000 deaths in the US since 2000. The settlement calls for the family to contribute at least US$3 billion in cash over time and give up control of the company. In all, the plan could be worth up to US$12 billion over time.

But the offer comes with a major catch: The company says the family may back out if lawsuits against family members are allowed to move ahead. They're all on hold for now as the company's settlement efforts play out in bankruptcy court.

In a statement on Monday, Daniel Connolly, a lawyer for one branch of the Sackler family, said it's not helpful to argue over how much family members received. "The Sackler family hopes to reach a productive resolution where they contribute Purdue for the public benefit and provide at least US$3 billion of additional money to help communities and people who need help now," he said, "which makes more sense for everyone than continuing litigation that only squander resources."

The report by consultant Alix Partners included in a court filing on Monday gives the most detail to date on how much the family benefited from Purdue.

The company said in a statement that it's providing "this exceedingly rare level of transparency to help ensure that all claimants, including attorneys general and the communities they represent, can support the settlement structure that would transfer more than US$10 billion of value to the American public to address the opioid epidemic and save lives."

The report shows the Sackler payments jumped beginning in 2008 — the year after Purdue agreed to pay a federal fine of US$635 million for misleading the public about OxyContin's addiction risks.

Federal data made public earlier this year showed that OxyContin sales grew even after the fine. And the death toll from opioids, a class of drug that includes prescription painkillers as well as heroin and illicitly made fentanyl, rose, too, peaking in 2017.

And the new filing shows Sackler family members brought in far more money. In each year from 2008 through 2013, the distributions to the family — or tax payments on their behalf — totalled well over $1 billion. The number went down to less than US$800 million in 2014 and 2015, US$651 million in 2016 and just over US$200 million in 2017.

The family, listed by Forbes magazine in 2013 as one the nation's 20 wealthiest, has stopped taking distributions from Purdue.

The filing shows the company kept paying family legal bills until early this year. From 2016 through Feb. 28, the company paid $17.6 million in Sackler legal bills, with nearly half that amount coming in 2019 as lawsuits mounted.

While Sackler family members remain the Stamford, Connecticut-based company's owners, none are now on its board of directors.

- AP