US consultancy McKinsey has agreed to pay $650 million under a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with the US government to avoid a criminal trial for its role in the crisis. opiates.
According to the agreement registered Friday with a court in Virginia (East), the firm will be under surveillance for five years for having contributed to the opioid crisis by advising pharmaceutical groups such as Purdue Pharma, manufacturer of the painkiller OxyContin.
The document specifies that McKinsey has already paid out nearly a billion dollars as part of several agreements concluded outside of court since 2019, including more than 640 million with the fifty states and several American territories and more than 345 million in civil proceedings. The group was also fined by the American Stock Exchange Police (SEC) for deficient internal controls. When contacted by AFP, the firm did not immediately respond.
Withdrawal of all advice on narcotics
According to the agreement, McKinsey did not benefit from a certain amount of goodwill from the American authorities because it did not itself reveal the alleged facts on time. On the other hand, its ex post facto cooperation and the measures subsequently undertaken worked in its favor during these negotiations.
In particular, he undertook to no longer advise companies on the development, manufacturing, promotion, marketing, sale or use of an opiate or any other narcotic.
He also dismissed two employees for destroying documents in this case. McKinsey had notably advised Purdue Pharma to help it boost sales of OxyContin, the State of New York claimed in a complaint. The cabinet recommended in particular that he focus on high dosages, considered the most lucrative but very addictive.
The overprescription of this drug is generally considered to have triggered the opioid crisis in the United States.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), more than 700,000 people died between 1999 and 2022 from an overdose linked to taking opiates, obtained on prescription or illegally. For the first time since 2018, the number of deaths linked to opiates (mainly fentanyl) decreased in 2023 (81,083 deaths) compared to the previous year (84,181 deaths).
