You Will Anyway: Big Pharma family crooks

Monday, September 16, 2019

Big Pharma family crooks

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP filed for bankruptcy protection in New York on Sunday night, succumbing to pressure from more than 2,000 lawsuits alleging the company helped heighten the deadly United States opioid epidemic.

Purdue's board met on Sunday evening to approve the long-expected bankruptcy filing, which the company is pursuing to restructure under terms of a proposal to settle the widespread litigation.

alJazeera

Can't pay those settlements if you're bankrupt. Nice going.

But some of them could actually have been paid.

The billionaire family that owns Oxycontin-maker Purdue Pharma LP made about $1 billion in transfers among themselves and their shell companies while they were "draining Purdue of its opioids proceeds," New York Attorney General Letitia James told a judge in a letter.

[...]

James said she wrote the letter to show the judge the importance of the subpoenas, as Purdue seeks to quash them before the other banks respond. In a statement Friday, the [New York] attorney general accused the Sacklers of misusing the court to "shield their financial misconduct."

[...]

The transfers, some through Swiss bank accounts, were revealed in documents provided by an unspecified financial institution in response to a subpoena - one of at least 10 banks facing demands for information in New York's lawsuit against Purdue and the Sackler family, the state said in a court filing Friday.

[...]

James said she wrote the letter to show the judge the importance of the subpoenas, as Purdue seeks to quash them before the other banks respond. In a statement Friday, the [New York] attorney general accused the Sacklers of misusing the court to "shield their financial misconduct."

[...]

The dispute over the subpoenas comes as Purdue is seeking approval of a tentative $12 billion settlement to resolve most of the claims consolidated before a judge in Cleveland, Ohio.

[...]

Friday's filing lists several examples of transfers, such as $64 million transferred by a "newly discovered entity" called Purdue Pharma Trust MDAS to Mortimer D.A. Sackler in 2009.

alJazeera

Mortimer Sackler. What a great villain name.

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.