Purdue Pharma's bankruptcy plan includes special protection for the Sackler family fortune [View all]

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Related: Purdue Pharma Looks to Extend Bankruptcy Shield to Sacklers (Wall Street Journal)

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Source: Washington Post

Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy plan includes special protection for the Sackler family fortune

If lawsuits against the wealthy family aren’t halted, the Sacklers ‘may be unwilling—or unable’ to contribute billions to the drug makers bankruptcy as planned, Purdue said in a court filing Wednesday.

By Renae Merle and Lenny Bernstein
September 18, 2019 at 4:38 p.m. EDT

In 2008, as Purdue Pharma was searching for a new chief executive, Richard Sackler received a memo from an adviser.

“In the event that a favorable [recapitalization] deal cannot be structured during 2008, the most certain way for the owners to diversify their risk is to distribute more free cash flow to themselves,” F. Peter Boer, a member of Purdue’s board of directors told Sackler, a prominent member of the wealthy family that owns the company.

That, authorities allege, is exactly what the Sackler family did. A lawsuit filed by the state of Massachusetts claims the Sacklers transferred more than $4 billion from the company to personal accounts between 2008 and 2016. Oregon asserts the family may have taken as much as $10 billion out of the company.

Now, as the maker of OxyContin heads to bankruptcy court, those billions represent a central sticking point in the company’s plan to resolve thousands of lawsuits against it. Purdue asked the bankruptcy judge, Robert D. Drain, on Wednesday to take the unusual step of temporarily halting lawsuits against the Sackler family.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/18/purdue-pharmas-bankruptcy-plan-includes-special-protection-sackler-family-fortune/