by Bob Fernandez and Craig R McCoy for the Philadelphia Inquirer via ProPublica
Reporting Highlights
- Delayed Justice: After a whistleblower exposed the criminal behavior of Endo, a drug manufacturer, the Justice Department waited more than a decade to bring charges against the company.
- A Steep Discount: Federal agencies said Endo owed up to $7 billion in criminal fines, back taxes and other charges. The government settled this year for just $200 million.
- Winners and Losers: Endo is still selling narcotics. Lawyers made $350 million. A few executives shared $95 million in bonuses. Thousands of opioid victims are to share $40 million.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
This spring, the Justice Department announced a major victory against a drug firm that manufactured billions of opioid painkillers. Endo Health Solutions, the agency said, would face $1.5 billion in fines and forfeitures and plead guilty to a corporate criminal charge.
Prosecutors said the massive fine would hold accountable a suburban Philadelphia company that profited by “misrepresenting the safety of their opioid products and using reckless marketing tactics to increase sales.”
But in the end, federal prosecutors offered far friendlier terms than those trumpeted by the agency.
Endo would not have to pay the $1.5 billion in criminal penalties, which was already a deep discount from the billions federal officials said Endo owed for dodging taxes and driving up Medicare costs.
In what amounted to a liability fire sale by the Justice Department, the company’s woes with the federal government would all be resolved by a $200 million payment.
In sentencing Endo in federal court in May, Judge Linda Parker wondered how the amount paid to the U.S. could be so low.
“I don’t understand. I really don’t understand,” Parker said. “I just don’t understand how it went from $1 billion to $200 million.”
Federal prosecutor Benjamin Cornfeld explained: Endo was broke.
“The reality is that there are limited funds available because the debtors were in bankruptcy,” Cornfeld said.
But a fuller explanation,…
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