Sacklers used Swiss bank accounts to hide $1b transfers

The family that owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma used Swiss bank accounts to conceal the transfer of millions of dollars from the company to themselves, New York state's attorney general contends in court papers.

New York - asking a judge to enforce subpoenas of companies, banks and advisers to Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family - said it has already documented $1bn in transfers between those parties.

Those transactions include millions shifted from a Purdue parent company to former board member Mortimer DA Sackler, prosecutors said in the papers. Prosecutors say Sackler then redirected substantial amounts to shell companies that own family homes in Manhattan and the Hamptons.

The filing, made in a New York court, follows decisions by that state and others to reject a tentative settlement with Stamford, Connecticutbased Purdue, announced this week, arguing it does not do enough to make amends for the company's and family's alleged roles in flooding US communities with prescription painkillers.

New York, Massachusetts and others contend that the Sacklers drained more than $4bn from Purdue since 2007, moving much of it offshore to avoid future claims. In its filing Friday, New York told a state judge that the only way it can determine the full extent of those transfers is if all those it has subpoenaed are forced to provide documents detailing their interactions with the Sackler family.

"It is elementary, however, that how the Sacklers moved and tried to hide their money will be key evidence of the liability of all of the participants," a lawyer for the attorney general wrote the judge.

The pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson ran a "false and dangerous" sales campaign that caused addiction and death as it drove America's opioid epidemic, an Oklahoma court has ruled in the first judgement of its kind against the drug industry.

In a damning 42-page decision, Judge Thad Balkman ruled that the company bore a wide responsibility for helping to create the worst drug epidemic in US history. He said it not only aggressively pushed false claims about the safety and effectiveness of its own narcotic painkillers, but that it changed medical practice with "deceptive" claims intended to break down caution among doctors about prescribing opioids. That included using its huge resources to fund organisations and research to promote narcotics.

Balkman ordered the company to pay $572m in compensation initially with additional payments to be negotiated to cover treatment, overdose prevention and other costs of abating the epidemic in Oklahoma in the coming years. The state had asked for $17bn.

Johnson & Johnson said it will appeal. The verdict is a blow to a raft of other opioid makers, distributors and pharmacy chains facing more than 2,000 other lawsuits by communities across the country, as it will undercut their attempts to pin blame for an epidemic that has claimed more than 400,000 lives over the past two decades on doctors who prescribed opioids or those who used them.

Oklahoma's attorney general, Mike Hunter, said the ruling confirmed his claim that "Johnson & Johnson maliciously and diabolically created the opioid epidemic in our state", contributing to 6,000 deaths in Oklahoma alone since 2000.

"Today is a major victory for the state of Oklahoma, the nation and everyone who has lost a loved one because of an opioid overdose," he said. "Our evidence convincingly showed that this company did not just lie and mislead, they colluded with other companies en route to the deadliest man-made epidemic our nation has ever seen."

Hunter also sued Purdue Pharma, which played a leading part in kickstarting the opioid epidemic in the 1990s with its high-strength opioid, OxyContin. Purdue settled out of court for $270m before the trial but is facing hundreds of other legal actions.

Sabrina Strong, one of the trial lawyers for Johnson & Johnson, said the ruling was flawed. The company argued that the drugs it sold were approved by federal regulators and that they could not be tied directly to any deaths in Oklahoma.

"We have sympathy for all who suffer from substance abuse. But Johnson & Johnson did not cause the opioid abuse crisis here in Oklahoma or anywhere in this country," she said. But Balkman's ruling looked at a bigger picture that dismissed the company's attempt to portray the victims of the epidemic only as drug abusers.

The judge found that the opioid maker acted in concert with other companies to escalate prescriptions by pushing the false narrative that there was a desperate need for painkillers and "there was a low risk of abuse and a low danger of prescribing opioids".