McKinsey settles for $573M in OxyContin probe
McKinsey & Co., the consultant to blue-chip corporations and governments around the world, has agreed to pay $573 million to settle investigations into its role in helping “turbocharge” opioid sales, a rare instance of it being held publicly accountable for its work with clients.
The firm has reached the agreement with attorneys general in 47 states, the District of Columbia and five territories, according to five people familiar with the negotiations. The settlement comes after lawsuits unearthed a trove of documents showing how McKinsey worked to drive sales of Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin painkiller amid an opioid epidemic in the United States that has contributed to the deaths of more than 450,000 people over the past two decades.
McKinsey’s extensive work with Purdue included advising it to focus on selling lucrative highdose pills, the documents show, even after the drugmaker pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal criminal charges that it had misled doctors and regulators about OxyContin’s risks. The firm also worked with a number of opioidmakers to band together to “defend against strict treatment” by the Food and Drug Administration.
McKinsey will not admit wrongdoing in the settlement, to be filed in state courts on Thursday, but it will agree to court-ordered restrictions on its work with some types of addictive narcotics, according to those familiar with the arrangement. McKinsey will also retain emails for five years and disclose potential conflicts of interest when bidding for state contracts. And, in a move similar to the tobacco industry settlements, it will put tens of thousands of pages of documents related to its opioid-related work onto a publicly available database.
States will use the civil penalties — $478 million of which must be paid within 60 days — for opioid treatment, prevention and recovery programs, the people said. It will be the first money states will see after Purdue Pharma in October agreed to plead guilty to federal criminal charges over its marketing of OxyContin and to pay $8.3 billion. Purdue declared bankruptcy, meaning the states party to that agreement will have to line up with other creditors.