A congressional investigation into global consultancy McKinsey & Co.’s role in advising its client on promoting opioid sales includes a look at “risk-management” processes that were overseen for a time by the current president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Bloomberg News reported. Thomas Barkin, who was chief risk officer at McKinsey from 2015 through 2017 before joining the Richmond Fed, has not been a direct focus of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s investigation. But an interim report released April 13 shows lawmakers are delving into the firm’s oversight of its engagement with Purdue Pharma LP, makers of the painkiller OxyContin. That scrutiny extends to possible failings of McKinsey’s internal risk-management processes, which Barkin oversaw for some of the years the inquiry covers, a person familiar with the investigation told Bloomberg News. The focus on risk management is further underlined in a letter on Nov. 5, 2021 written by the committee’s chair, New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney, seeking documents from McKinsey. The firm’s actions, she wrote, “point to possible systemic issues with McKinsey’s risk management and internal controls and raise serious questions about whether the company has taken sufficient steps to prevent or detect questionable conduct.” The committee will hold a public hearing into the consultancy firm’s role in the opioid epidemic on Wednesday in Washington.
