Purdue Pharma LP faced its first court challenge in 2007, pleading guilty to misleading the public about the addictive potential of its flagship painkiller, OxyContin, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek analysis. By 2019 more than 130 people were dying daily from opioid overdoses in the U.S., and Purdue faced thousands of lawsuits for its role in the epidemic. The company, owned by the Sackler family, declared bankruptcy in September of that year to short-circuit the lawsuits. But in the years prior to the bankruptcy, Purdue and its subsidiaries moved billions to companies ultimately registered in Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands, and Delaware. The trail that traces those billions is labyrinthine, but here’s what we know about their maneuvering based on hundreds of pages of publicly available information. (In a statement, Purdue said that it had “provided the company’s stakeholders and the American public with an extraordinary amount of detailed financial information.” A spokesperson for the family said in a statement, “All of the Sackler family members, including those who served on Purdue’s board, have always conducted themselves properly.”) From 2008 through 2017, $10.8 billion flowed out of Purdue in hundreds of transactions through numerous subsidiaries. (A small percentage of this sum was reinvested in Purdue or lent to and fully repaid by an affiliated company.) After tax bills were settled, the bulk of the cash landed in two Delaware companies, Rosebay Medical Co. and Beacon Co. New York State Attorney General Letitia James’s office has said the Sacklers hid billions of dollars. She’s subpoenaed at least 10 financial institutions connected to the family “in an effort to establish the Sacklers’ fraud,” according to a filing. The subpoenas allege that a portion of the $4.4 billion was used for multimillion-dollar real estate transactions.
