McKinsey & Co has agreed to pay $650 million to resolve a U.S. Division of Justice investigation into the consulting agency’s work advising opioid producer OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma on the best way to increase gross sales.
McKinsey has entered right into a five-year deferred prosecution settlement filed in federal court docket in Abingdon, Virginia, to resolve prison expenses introduced as a part of a uncommon company prosecution in regards to the advertising and marketing of addictive painkillers that helped gasoline the lethal U.S. opioid epidemic.
Prosecutors stated that McKinsey supplied Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue recommendation on measures it might take to “turbocharge” OxyContin gross sales. It was charged with conspiring to misbrand a drug and obstruction of justice.
A former senior associate at McKinsey, Martin Elling, has additionally agreed to plead responsible to obstruction of justice for destroying data associated to McKinsey’s work for Purdue, in line with court docket papers. He’s scheduled to enter his plea on Jan. 10.
McKinsey and a lawyer for Elling didn’t reply instantly to requests for remark.
McKinsey beforehand reached agreements totaling almost $1 billion to settle widespread lawsuits and different authorized actions alleging the corporate helped gasoline the opioid epidemic by means of its work advising OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and different drugmakers.
The settlements concerned all 50 states, Washington, D.C., U.S. territories, varied native governments, faculty districts, Native American tribes, and well being insurers.
In 2019, McKinsey introduced it might not advise shoppers on opioid-related companies. The corporate has maintained that none of its settlements comprise admissions of legal responsibility or wrongdoing.
Purdue pleaded responsible in 2020 to prison expenses protecting widespread misconduct concerning its dealing with of prescription painkillers, together with conspiring to defraud U.S. officers and pay unlawful kickbacks to each medical doctors and an digital healthcare data vendor.
Purdue is at the moment concerned in court-ordered mediation over a multibillion-dollar settlement reached in chapter proceedings that the U.S. Supreme Courtroom turned apart.
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