The corporate strategic consulting firm McKinsey & Company has agreed to pay hundreds of millions for its role in creating the prescription opioid addiction epidemic, and more. 

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Opiates and Opioids

Corporate Management Consulting Firm McKinsey to Pay $650 Million in Opioid Settlement With Justice Department. McKinsey & Company, a strategic and management consulting firm that advised Purdue Pharma, among other clients, has agreed to pay $650 million to the Justice Department over its work with the OxyContin manufacturer. A senior company executive, Martin Elling, will plead guilty to obstruction of justice for destroying company records in a bid to obscure its role in helping to generate the opioid epidemic of the past quarter-century. 

McKinsey advised Purdue to "turbocharge" the sale of OxyContin even as the prescription opioid was driving the spread of opiate use that morphed into the illicit fentanyl epidemic that still confronts the country. McKinsey billed Purdue $93 million for consulting over 15 years. 

McKinsey had previously settled opioid investigations by paying hundreds of millions of dollars but not admitting any wrongdoing. That is no longer the case. 

The company issued a statement Friday apologizing for its role in the opioid epidemic: "We are deeply sorry for our past client service to Purdue Pharma and the actions of a former partner who deleted documents related to his work for that client," the consulting firm wrote. "We should have appreciated the harm opioids were causing in our society and we should not have undertaken sales and marketing work for Purdue Pharma. This terrible public health crisis and our past work for opioid manufacturers will always be a source of profound regret for our firm."

Asset Forfeiture

Sens. Booker, Paul Introduce Bipartisan FAIR Act to Reform Civil Forfeiture Laws. Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act on Thursday to reform civil forfeiture laws and protect Americans’ rights from government abuse. 

"Civil asset forfeiture allows federal law enforcement to seize the property of Americans who haven’t even been charged with or convicted of a crime," said Booker. "Under this system, police can keep cash, cars, and even homes based on mere suspicion of a crime. These losses often become law enforcement’s profit because the burden is on the property owner to prove they should get their property back. Reforming federal civil asset forfeiture is long overdue and the FAIR Act will ensure due process and protect the public from unfair deprivations and forfeiture abuses."

The latest version of the FAIR Act closely mirrors previous versions of the bill, with updates to reflect changes made by the House Judiciary Committee during a markup on June 14, 2023. The bill was favorably reported out of committee by a unanimous 26-0 vote, signaling broad bipartisan support and increasing the likelihood of legislative progress. In the Senate, the FAIR Act is currently cosponsored by U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Mike Lee (R-UT), Angus King (I-ME), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY).

The FAIR Act would eliminate "equitable sharing," the program that allows state law enforcement officers to turn seized property over to federal officials for forfeiture — and get up to 80% of the proceeds of the forfeited property. The FAIR Act ends "equitable" sharing and ensures that law enforcement cannot ignore state law. It would also restore the rule in which the proceeds of forfeiture go to the Treasury’s General Fund, where Congress can appropriate the money for any purpose.

The FAIR Act also places on the government the burden to show that a property owner consented or was willfully blind to his property being used in a crime by a third party and would require that the government prove its case by the higher standard of clear and convincing evidence, instead of the current preponderance of the evidence standard that the property was used for an illegal purpose.

International

Syrian Rebels Uncover Massive Cache of Captagon at Army Base Run By Assad's Brother. Captagon, an amphetamine-type stimulant popular in the Middle East, has been rumored to be a big revenue generator for the recently deposed regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and now, with his regime having vanished and Assad himself having fled to Moscow, Syrian rebels are adding some substance to those rumors. 

They released videos Friday of a captagon factory hidden in a quarry at a Syrian Army base overseen by his younger brother, Maher al-Assad, one of the most powerful men in the country (until last week). The factory contained hundreds of thousands of the pills, as well as piles of precursor chemicals. 

Captagon manufacturing in Syria was pioneered by rebel factions after the civil war broke out in 2011 but since has reportedly come to be dominated by the Syrian state. The global market for captagon is valued at around $10 billion, with about 80 percent being manufactured in Syria, netting the al-Assad government around $2.4 billion a year, more than it's war-torn and sanction-battered legitimate economy. Much of the production and distribution was overseen by the Fourth Armored Division of the Syrian Army, an elite unit commanded by Maher al-Assad. Other major players in the trade included regime-friendly businessmen, Hezbollah, and more members of al-Assad's extended family. 

Ahmed al-Shara, leader of the rebel offensive that broke the al-Assad regime, vowed to eradicate the trade during a speech last week: "Syria has become the biggest producer of captagon on Earth," he said, "and today, Syria is going to be purified by the grace of God."

But given the huge profits involved, the disarray within Syria, the well-established smuggling networks, the easy access to precursor chemicals, and captagon-hungry consumer markets in the region, it is hard to see the trade going away.