OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to plead guilty to three criminal charges

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma will plead guilty to three criminal charges to settle a sweeping federal probe of its role in the opioid crisis in a deal that will also end the wealthy Sackler family’s reign over the controversial company, officials said Wednesday.

The Connecticut-based drugmaker will face more than $8.3 billion in civil and criminal penalties under the deal with the US Department of Justice — though the bankrupt company will likely pay significantly less if the settlement wins court approval.

The agreement also wrests control of Purdue’s business from members of the wealthy Sackler family, who agreed to pay $225 million under a separate civil settlement and to turn the company over to federal control. But neither deal will absolve any of the Sacklers or Purdue’s executives from future criminal charges, officials said.

The settlement marks a major milestone in the government’s efforts to hold drugmakers accountable for a nationwide addiction to opioids that’s caused more than 470,000 deaths over the past two decades.

“Purdue deeply regrets and accepts responsibility for the misconduct detailed by the Department of Justice in the agreed statement of facts,” Purdue chairman Steve Miller said in a statement. “Purdue today is a very different company.”

Prosecutors say Purdue marketed and sold addictive opioids like OxyContin to health care providers who were diverting the drugs to abusers. The company also reported misleading information to the Drug Enforcement Administration to boost its manufacturing quotas and pushed doctors to prescribe more of its drugs through a series of kickback schemes, the feds said.

The settlement — which is subject to approval by the federal court overseeing Purdue’s bankruptcy — will see the company plead guilty in New Jersey federal court to conspiracy to defraud the US along with violations of a federal anti-kickback law.

The deal calls for a $3.5 billion criminal fine and a $2 billion forfeiture against Purdue, which the feds called the largest penalties ever issued against a pharmaceutical manufacturer. The company has also agreed to a separate $2.8 billion civil penalty, officials said.

It’s unclear whether the feds will collect all of the criminal fine because it will be taken through Purdue’s bankruptcy, which involves several other creditors.

Additionally, Purdue will only have to pay $225 million of the criminal forfeiture if the bankruptcy court approves a plan to dissolve the company and turn it into a so-called public benefit corporation owned by a trust.

The Sacklers would not have any ownership stake in the new entity, which would donate opioid addiction treatments and overdose antidotes to communities that need them and put any money it makes toward opioid abatement programs, officials said.

Some of the Sacklers reached their own deal with the feds to settle allegations that five members of the family approved a plan that had Purdue sales reps focus their OxyContin marketing efforts on prescribers who were already writing lots of scripts for the drug.

“We reached today’s agreement in order to facilitate a global resolution that directs substantial funding to communities in need, rather than to years of legal proceedings,” members of the Sackler family who served on Purdue’s board said in a statement. “We have deep compassion for people who suffer from opioid addiction and abuse and hope the proposal will be implemented as swiftly as possible to help address their critical needs.”

But state attorneys general who have brought their own lawsuits against Purdue said the feds failed to hold the company or the Sacklers sufficiently accountable for the pain they’ve caused.

“Today’s deal doesn’t account for the hundreds of thousands of deaths or millions of addictions caused by Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family,” New York AG Letitia James said in a statement. “Instead, it allows billionaires to keep their billions without any accounting for how much they really made.”