BOSTON (AP) — Consulting firm McKinsey & Company has agreed to pay $650 million to settle a federal investigation into its work helping opioid maker Purdue Pharma boost sales of the highly addictive drug OxyContin, according to court documents filed in Virginia on Friday.
As part of the deal with the US Department of Justice, McKinsey will avoid criminal charges if it pays the sum and adheres to certain conditions for five years, including ceasing all sales, marketing or promotion activities controlled substances.
A former McKinsey senior partner, Martin Elling, has also agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice for deleting documents from his laptop after learning of investigations into Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin that was then a customer was, according to the documents. An attorney for Elling declined to comment Friday.
McKinsey said in a statement Friday that it “deeply regrets” its work for Purdue Pharma.
“We should have realized the harm that opioids were causing in our society and should not have undertaken sales and marketing work for Purdue Pharma,” the company said. “This terrible public health crisis and our past work for opioid manufacturers will always be a source of deep regret for our company.”
It’s the latest attempt by federal prosecutors to hold companies accountable. Officials say this has fueled America’s addiction and overdose crisis, with opioids responsible for more than 80,000 annual deaths in recent years. Over the past decade, most of these have been attributed to illicit fentanyl, which is found in many illicit drugs. Earlier in the epidemic, prescription pills were the leading cause of death.
Over the past eight years, drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies have agreed to settlements worth about $50 billion with governments — with most of the money to be used to fight the crisis.
Purdue paid McKinsey more than $93 million over 15 years for various products, including how to improve OxyContin sales. Prosecutors say McKinsey knew “the risks and dangers” of OxyContin and that Purdue Pharma executives had previously pleaded guilty to crimes related to the drug’s promotion, but decided to work with the opioid manufacturer anyway.
One of McKinsey’s tasks, the papers said, was to identify which prescribers would generate the most additional prescriptions if Purdue salespeople focused on them. That resulted in prescriptions that were “not for a medically accepted indication, unsafe, ineffective and medically unnecessary, and were often diverted for use without a legitimate medical purpose,” the filing said.
