Speaking of addiction, Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg is following the lead of mostly Republican attorneys general in supporting the settlement Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma is offering the states to atone for addicting and killing so many Americans:
Ravnsborg says the lawsuit and bankruptcy is the best way to get people damaged by the drug the help they need…
“But I do think this will be the quickest way we can help people in South Dakota because of the…what OxyContin predominately, the main drug that Perdue [sic] Pharma makes has done to our state and our country.”
Ravnsborg says the state could be in line for some of the settlement money…
“So the overall structure talks about anywhere from three to 12 million dollars coming back to the states and I do believe that the main thing is, is that OxyContin will not be sold by Perdue Pharma. Part of the structure is that Perdue Pharma will no longer exist and have a scaled-down sell-off of some of their assets and things. There’s a number of options on the table of what to do with it going forward and help people wean off of it” [Zach Nelson, “South Dakota Likely to Get Some Pay Odd from Perdue [sic] Pharma Lawsuit,” KCCR, 2019.09.24].
With only a couple exceptions on each side, Republican AGs are speaking up for the settlement while Democratic AGs are saying the settlement doesn’t go far enough to hold the billionaire Sackler family accountable for the damage they’ve done. They’d like to go after the retirement package the Sacklers have been draining from their company accounts:
New York state Attorney General Letitia James says the family that owns Purdue Pharma, maker of the opioid OxyContin, used Swiss bank accounts to transfer $1 billion from the company to itself.
The allegation, which came in court documents filed late Friday, indicates that the Sackler family is trying to keep its wealth free from potential liability in other court cases involving Purdue Pharma’s role in the opioid crisis.
“While the Sacklers continue to lowball victims and skirt a responsible settlement, we refuse to allow the family to misuse the courts in an effort to shield their financial misconduct,” James said in a statement.
“Records from one financial institution alone have shown approximately $1 billion in wire transfers between the Sacklers, entities they control, and different financial institutions, including those that have funneled funds into Swiss bank accounts,” she added.
The filing comes after nearly two dozen states and 2,300 local governments reached a tentative settlement with Purdue Pharma to resolve thousands of lawsuits alleging that the company helped fuel the opioid crisis. New York and others states rejected the settlement.
James has been critical of the settlement, calling the deal “an insult” [Richard Gonzales, “New York AG Says Sacklers Transferred $1B from Pharma Accounts to Themselves,” NPR, 2019.09.15].
In his radio interview, Ravnsborg touts his experience with the “lingo” of bankruptcy proceedings. You’d think he’d know some lingo for transferring money to Swiss bank accounts before the bankruptcy court gets its hands on your assets—you know, something like diversion of funds or laundering.
Odds are that B won’t sit in Bern for long. Were it mine, I’d be starting a trust or two and getting that dirty money to South Dakota, pronto. Crooked Pierre isn’t going to change for a long time so it’s safer than Switzerland.
Indeed, why don’t the Sacklers transfers some cash to our Sioux Falls trusts? Heck of a market for concentrating wealth!
As AG Ravnsborg cheers for a few million dollars that he won’t have to work for (and let’s pause there: if really beating Purdue Pharma depended on Jason Ravnsborg’s courtroom persuasiveness, then yeah, I’d settle, too), Moody Investors Service says the potential $12B settlement would compensate for only a small chunk of the damage done by flooding America with opioids:
You know, if one of our Lakota neighbors killed a few thousand people and did $78 billion of damage, AG Ravnsborg would probably ask for the death penalty.
How unsurprising that the GOP wants to go easier on the billionaires. 😡😠
The Sacklers killed people and deliberately caused terrible suffering. This settlement needs to make them hurt. That’s not for revenge. That’s to send a message to other entitled rich SOBs who seem to think that people who struggle are less human.
This is nothing more than a cash cow for state budget shortfalls.There will be numerous articles about how the money will be used to help addicts, but the cynic in me sees this with the same result of the lawsuit payments by tobacco companies. Disappeared in the general fund with a few no smoking billboards cluttering the countryside.
iowa gets 4.6 million bucks from first settlement of opioid cases. You guys got 77k, over half of which is dedicated to Medicaid funds.
https://kicdam.com/news/170071-iowa-gets-share-of-opiod-settlement/
This is not the big suit against Purdue Phasrma.
over half of iowa’s share is for Medicaid as well.