Capping years of federal investigations into tactics the government said helped fuel the opioid crisis, Purdue Pharma LP has agreed to plead guilty to three felonies related to its marketing and distribution of powerful painkiller OxyContin.
The decision is part of an $8.34 billion settlement.
Thousands of lawsuits have been filed by state and local governments against Purdue and other major drug makers and distributors over an opioid crises that has killed at least 450,000 people since 1999.
The United States Justice Department made public the settlement on Wednesday, alongside a deal with Purdue’s owners, members of the Sackler family.
The price tag for Purdue, however, is largely symbolic: The bankrupt company’s assets fall well short of $8 billion.
It will pay the federal government $225 million, and much of the rest if the fines will be waived to allow more money to flow to states, counties and tribes that accuse Purdue of sparking widespread opioid addition and deaths.
Specifically, the company has agreed to plead guilty to felonies and violating anti-kickback laws.
The penalties include $3.54 million in criminal fines, $2 billion in criminal forfeiture and $2.9 billion in civil penalties, related to violating federal requirements to monitor promotion and sales of a scheduled drug, contributing to false claims to Medicare and Medicaid, and involvement in a kickback scheme with a software company that would alert doctors to promote OxyContin.
This is the first time since 2007 that Purdue has pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges for misleading doctors, patients and the government about the drug. At the time, the company paid $600 million in fines.
Purdue has proposed that the company be run as a “public benefit corporation,” with proceeds from continuing limited sales of OxyContin and several overdose-reversing medications under development to go toward opioid abatement. The Justice Department endorses that model.
In a forceful letter addressed to Attorney General William P. Barr earlier this month, the attorneys general denied the public trust model, and its association with governmental entities. Governments should not be in the opioid business, they said. Instead, they said that Purdue should be run privately with government oversight.
Another objection to Wednesday’s settlement centers on the resolution of a civil suit against individual Sacklers, raised by private families who are suing. A forensic audit last year by Purdue found that the Sacklers directed at least $10.7 billion in the company’s proceeds to family-controlled trusts and holding companies, even as Purdue was facing legal scrutiny.
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October 26, 2020 at 06:00PM
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Purdue to accept a guilty plea for opioids - Antelope Valley Press
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