Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Keefe Patrick Radden

Author:Keefe, Patrick Radden [Keefe, Patrick Radden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Biography, Business, Science, Politics, Crime
ISBN: 9780385545686
Amazon: 0385545681
Goodreads: 43868109
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2021-04-13T07:00:00+00:00

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The same month that they paid Udell his $5 million, the Sacklers voted to pay themselves $325 million. One of the grieving parents at the sentencing, a Florida man who had lost his son less than a year earlier, had likened the whole pas de deux between the government and the company to a game. The penalty was “just another move,” he said. “They haven’t changed a thing. They’re working it just as hard as ever. They’re going to take money out of the checkbook. Pay it. Keep going.”

In theory, this conviction was supposed to represent a major step in reforming Purdue. But inside the company, it was regarded as little more than a speeding ticket. In a subsequent congressional hearing at which John Brownlee testified about the case, Arlen Specter, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, remarked that when the government fines corporations, rather than sending executives to jail, it amounts to “expensive licenses for criminal misconduct.” And this appears to be the way that the sanction against Purdue was perceived by the Sacklers and their executives. Not long after the guilty plea, a new administrative assistant, Nancy Camp, overheard Purdue’s chief financial officer, Ed Mahony, talking about the $600 million fine. “That’s been in the bank for years,” he said. “That’s nothing to us.”

Shortly after the settlement in Virginia, the Sacklers voted to expand Purdue’s sales force by hiring a hundred additional reps. It was time to get back to selling OxyContin. As for the Agreed Statement of Facts—the recitation of Purdue’s misdeeds, which had been negotiated with such care by all of the attorneys for the company and the Department of Justice and was meant to form the basis for Purdue’s good behavior moving forward—on the ninth floor of headquarters in Stamford, it was not taken very seriously.

When Richard Sackler was later asked, under oath, whether there had been anything in the document, in the way of corporate misconduct, that surprised him, he seemed curiously unprepared to answer.

“I can’t say,” Richard replied.

“As we sit here today, have you ever read the entire document?” an attorney asked.

“No,” said Richard Sackler.

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