AS PURDUE PHARMA SOUGHT CONTROVERSIAL BANKRUPTCY SETTLEMENT, IT SPENT OVER $1.2 MILLION ON LOBBYING – By Matthew Cunningham-Cook (The Intercept) / Aug 13 2021
The proposed settlement allows the Sackler family to walk away with over $6 billion.
AS PURDUE PHARMA seeks approval for a controversial bankruptcy settlement, it has retained the services of highly compensated lobbying firms Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and Capitol Hill Consulting Group.
At the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy trial that began Thursday, Judge Robert Drain is widely expected to approve a proposed settlement of the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy that would release members of the billionaire Sackler family, the company’s owners, from all current and future opioid-related civil claims.
In the year and a half leading up to the trial, Purdue spent at least $1.2 million on federal lobbying expenses as it worked toward the settlement, an Intercept review of lobbying records shows. If the settlement is approved, the Sacklers will be making a contribution of $4.28 billion, which will leave them with over $6 billion at minimum in total assets — money that will be effectively untouchable by opioid crisis victims, even though it is Purdue going bankrupt, not the Sacklers.
“This whole bankruptcy was the Sacklers trying to buy immunity,” said activist Ed Bisch, who lost his son to an OxyContin overdose in 2001 and is a claimant and active opponent of the settlement. “The only question was what would be the price.”
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2021/08/13/purdue-pharma-sackler-bankruptcy-lobbying/
