The Sackler family got richer than the Rockefellers through their role in creating and sustaining the opioid crisis, which took more American lives than the Vietnam war.
The family is secretive and litigious and is mostly known as "philanthropists" due to the crumbs they dribbled over art galleries and museums from their opioid loot (those cultural institutions are now removing the Sackler name wherever it appears).
Now, with the family in courthouses across the nation, facing fines so great they might exceed the riches they derived from so much suffering, there is renewed interest in cataloging the extent and location of that vast fortune.
Last March, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the family and alleged that it had squirreled away large amounts of money in shell companies, offshore financial secrecy havens, and other rainy-day funds favored by the looter classes.
Now, Jones has filed fresh documents detailing $1b in wire transfers that used cutouts and other circuitous routes to move the family money offshore and into Swiss banks. These records are from a single financial institution whose records the DA's office investigated, and people with Sackler money don't launder it through just one bank.
The Sacklers' spokesapologist said "There is nothing newsworthy about these decade-old transfers, which were perfectly legal and appropriate in every respect."
The Sacklers have mooted putting Purdue Pharma into a trust and handing over their own cash to settle the claims against them. Jones's filing suggests that these offers are insincere, relying on vast, secret reserves of cash to keep the Sacklers from ever facing any real economic consequences for their complicity in the opioid epidemic.
“Already, these records have allowed the state to identify previously unknown shell companies that one of the Sackler defendants used to shift Purdue money through accounts around the world and then conceal it in at least two separate multimillion-dollar real estate investments back here in New York, sanitized [until now] of any readily detectable connections to the Sackler family," wrote lawyer David E. Nachman from James's office in a letter to the court, according to the Times.
NY AG uncovers $1 billion in Sackler family wire transfers amid opioid probe: report [Rachel Frazin/The Hill]
