Seriously, Just Shut Them Down

Another day, another centimillion dollar settlement paid by McKinsey & Company for corruption, this one for rat-f%$#ery with Purdue Pharma in furtherance of addiction to opioids.

Enough already.

McKinsey & Company has agreed to pay $650 million to settle a Justice Department investigation of its work with the opioid maker Purdue Pharma. A former senior partner has also agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice for destroying internal company records in connection with that work.

At the center of the government’s case was the global consulting giant’s recommendation that Purdue Pharma “turbocharge” sales of Purdue’s flagship OxyContin painkiller in the midst of an opioid addiction epidemic that was killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The settlement and the government’s findings were presented at a news conference in Boston on Friday. According to prosecutors, McKinsey “knew the risks and dangers associated with OxyContin,” as well as the fact that top Purdue Pharma executives had pleaded guilty to federal crimes relating to sales of the drug. Yet the consulting company chose to continue working with the drugmaker to boost sales of the opioid.

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McKinsey is widely regarded as the world’s most prestigious management consulting firm, with offices around the globe from which it advises most of the Fortune 500 companies as well as government agencies, including those in authoritarian nations such as China and Saudi Arabia.

That they are not a corporate pariah is an indictment of our society in general.

In recent years, McKinsey has settled government investigations in the United States and overseas by paying hundreds of millions of dollars while not admitting any wrongdoing. That is no longer true.

McKinsey issued a statement on Friday apologizing for its work with the opioid maker.

Oh my, they apologized.  How about throwing executives in jail?

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In court papers released on Friday, federal prosecutors traced the arc of McKinsey’s work with the opioid maker.

In July 2009, McKinsey wrote that Purdue Pharma’s “top priority” should be “driving a more impactful OxyContin franchise.”

In subsequent years, as the opioid crisis grew, McKinsey continued to formulate new ways for the drugmaker to increase profits, including targeting “opioid naïve” patients, a term used to describe individuals not currently using the drug or those who had used it only once.

You know, before they are jailed, the people who did this should be publicly horsewhipped as well.

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Congress held hearings in 2022 focusing on the firm’s simultaneous work with opioid makers and the Food and Drug Administration after reports in The Times and elsewhere. A congressional report found that since 2010 at least 22 of the firm’s consultants had worked for both Purdue and the F.D.A., sometimes at the same time.

And they still are hired as consultants by the US government.

No.  Just no. 

My bad, they prosecuted one guy:

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The guilty plea by the former senior partner, Martin Elling, stems from internal communications in 2018, after Massachusetts sued Purdue over its opioid marketing. Two of the firm’s leading partners who oversaw the Purdue account, Mr. Elling and Arnab Ghatak, discussed how to handle it.

OK, they prosecuted two guys:

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The plea follows an announcement this month by federal prosecutors that another former McKinsey senior partner, Vikas Sagar, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with paying bribes to secure South African government contracts for the firm. McKinsey had earlier fired Mr. Sagar.

How about a corporate death penalty for McKinsey.  They should be destroyed just as Arthur Andersen was.