US prosecutors say the "bankrupt" Sacklers still have billions hidden away

The Sackler family (previously) made more money than the Rockefellers when their family business, Purdue Pharma, misled the public about the addictiveness of its flagship opioid, Oxycontin, and induced doctors to overprescribe it, kicking off an epidemic that has killed more Americans than the Vietnam war, with the body count at 400,000 and still climbing.

Until recently, the Sacklers were best known as "philanthropists," having perfected the reputation-washing playbook that corrupt oligarchs have used to rehabilitate their name since the gilded age robber-barons like Carnegie invented it.

But the Sacklers have since been embroiled in a series of federal and state criminal proceedings, as well as numerous civil cases, and these have revealed the family's complicity in the death toll, which recently prompted to family to agree to bankrupt Purdue and hand control of it, as well as $3b in cash, to settle the suits against them.

The family claimed that their total take from Purdue had amounted to $4b, and that the settlement would strip them of the gains from their illegal and unethical activities, but prosecutors have long argued that the Sacklers used shadowy money-laundering techniques to hide billions offshore, funnelling one billion dollars through a single bank.

Now, 24 States' Attorneys General have objected to the settlement, joining forces with lawyers representing 500 cities, counties and tribal governments. They deposed a company advisor who put the figure at $12b, not $4b, and the attorneys argue that settling outstanding lawsuits for $3b would allow the Sacklers to retain the bulk of the profits they received from their company's participation in mass overdoses and immiseration. Read the rest