Members of the wealthy Sackler family, owners of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP, have long denied that the US$10 billion they transferred from their company over the course of a decade was an unlawful attempt to shield assets in anticipation of litigation over their role in the opioid crisis.
In response to questions from a House oversight panel last week, David Sackler, who served on Purdue’s board from 2012 to 2018, testified that neither he, nor others, anticipated vast litigation that now totals roughly 3,000 legal actions. “I don't believe anyone knew that lawsuits that really began in earnest in 2017 would be coming back in 2008,” he told lawmakers.
“Well, I hope you're right and under logical circumstances I'd agree with you, but we're living in America. This is the land of the free and the home of the blameless,” Sackler wrote in an email. “We will be sued. Read the op-ed stuff in these local papers and ask yourself how long it will take these lawyers to figure out that we might settle with them if they can freeze our assets and threaten us.
"These cherrypicked snippets of emails ignore the full context of what they say and the rest of the legal filings, all of which demonstrate how the fraudulent conveyance claims are entirely without merit," added Daniel S. Connolly, a lawyer for the Raymond Sackler wing of the family, referring to creditors' challenges concerning the transfers.
In a February 2008 email, Mortimer D.A. Sackler urged Richard Sackler, at one point Purdue’s president, to sell their company. “Fundamentally, we don’t want to stay in this business anymore and I think the majority of your family feels the same way,” Mortimer said.