Bankruptcy creditors are pointing to a trove of decade-old documents as they probe whether members of the billionaire Sackler family improperly took funds out of Purdue Pharma LP, the maker of OxyContin, to keep the assets away from victims of the U.S. opioid epidemic, Bloomberg News reported. Creditors including U.S. states, cities and counties cite recently unsealed memos and emails involving the Sacklers, whose company has twice pleaded guilty to illegally marketing OxyContin painkillers. Creditors say the documents are among “powerful circumstantial evidence” that the Sacklers were worried as early as 2007 about being sued personally and discussed ways to protect their fortunes. “Ask yourself how long it will take these lawyers to figure out that we might settle with them if they can freeze our assets and threaten us,” David Sackler, son of one of the company’s co-owners, said in a May 2007 email included in the unsealed files. The company’s first guilty plea came that same month. “We’re rich?” wrote Sackler, then a 27-year-old money manager who wasn’t employed at the company and didn’t then have a say in strategy. “For how long? Until which suits get through to the family?” Family representatives say that the Sacklers didn’t do anything improper. If creditors succeed in showing the Sacklers made what the creditors claim were “improper transfers,” a judge could order them to make repayments. The documents — made public this month in Purdue’s bankruptcy case — are part of an ongoing fight between more than 20 state attorneys general and Sackler family members over $10 billion the creditors said was improperly moved out of Purdue in the decade following 2007, and whether opioid victims should get some of those funds. The Sacklers are offering to turn over control of the drugmaker to state and local governments and personally pay $3 billion. Creditors say that’s not enough. Purdue filed for bankruptcy last year, citing lawsuits from state and local governments. Creditors scour bankrupt companies for certain pre-filing transfers because owners aren’t allowed to take valuable assets if they think the firm may seek bankruptcy protection. Purdue’s creditors argue in court filings that family members ramped up their efforts to draw money out of the drugmaker after the company’s 2007 plea, amounting to “more than $10.3 billion over the next 10 years — more than 90% of Purdue’s total free cash flow,” according to creditors’ filings.
