The New York Times reports that the Sackler family, one of the nation’s wealthiest families, busily transferred assets to themselves as the opioid crisis worsened
The Sacklers derived most of their billions from Purdue Pharma, prominent manufacturer and marketer of Oxycontin.
Jonathan Sackler is a major supporter of charter schools. He underwrote charter schools in Connecticut, created ConnCAN, then 50CAN, and the many state affiliates of that group. At this very moment, GeorgiaCAN is pushing charters on the receptive Atlanta school board (whose president is ex-TFA).
The Times reports:
As scrutiny of Purdue Pharma’s role in the opioid epidemic intensified during the past dozen years, its owners, members of the Sackler family, withdrew more than $10 billion from the company, distributing it among trusts and overseas holding companies, according to a new audit commissioned by Purdue.
The amount is more than eight times what the family took out of the company in the 13 years after OxyContin, its signature product, was approved in 1995. The audit is likely to renew questions about how much the Sacklers should pay to resolve more than 2,800 lawsuits that seek to hold Purdue accountable for the opioid crisis.
The family has offered to contribute at least $3 billion in cash as part of a settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits brought by state and local governments against Purdue. But 24 states, led by Massachusetts and New York, have refused to sign onto the agreement, arguing that the Sacklers should pay more.
The new report, a 350-page forensic accounting prepared by Alix Partners, a consulting firm that Purdue has hired to help guide the company through Chapter 11 restructuring, was filed in bankruptcy court in White Plains, N.Y., Monday evening.
Sarah Darer Littman wrote about Jonathan Sackler’s long involvement in the charter school movement.
She says he brought his knowledge of marketing opioids to the charter school industry.
He is on the Board of Directors of the Achievement First charter school network. Until recently, Sackler served on the board of the New Schools Venture Fund, which invests in charter schools and advocates for their expansion. He was also on the board of the pro-charter advocacy group Students for Education Reform.
Through his personal charity, the Bouncer Foundation, Sackler donates to the abovementioned organizations, and an ecosystem of other charter school promoting entities, such as Families for Excellent Schools ($1,083,333 in 2014, $300,000 in 2015according to the Foundation’s Form 990s) Northeast Charter School Network ($150,000 per year in 2013, 2014 and 2015) and $275,000 to Education Reform Now (2015) and $200,000 (2015) to the Partnership for Educational Justice, the group founded by Campbell Brown which uses “impact litigation” to go after teacher tenure laws. Earlier this year, the Partnership for Educational Justice joined 50CAN, which Sackler also funds ($300,000 in 2014 and 2015), giving him a leadership role in the controversial—and so far failing cause—of weakening worker protections for teachers via the courts.
Just as Arthur Sackler founded the weekly Medical Tribune, to promote Purdue products to the medical professional who would prescribe them, Jon Sackler helps to fund the74million.org, the “nonpartisan” education news website founded by Campbell Brown. The site, which received startup funding from Betsy DeVos, decries the fact that “the education debate is dominated by misinformation and political spin,” yet is uniformly upbeat about charter schools while remarkably devoid of anything positive to say about district schools or teachers unions.
Charter chains are known for their lavish rallies, paid organizers, and “swag.”
These are techniques learned from the Sacklers and Purdue, writes Littman.
The description of “lavish swag” will sound familiar to anyone who has witnessed one of the no-expenses-spared charter school rallies that are a specialty of Sackler-funded organizations like Families for Excellent schools. Then there is the dizzying array of astroturf front groups all created for the purpose of demanding more charter schools. Just in Connecticut, we’ve had the Coalition for Every Child, A Better Connecticut, Fight for Fairness CT, Excel Bridgeport, and the Real Reform Now Network. All of these groups ostensibly claim to be fighting for better public schools for all children. In reality, they have been lobbying to promote charter schools, often running afoul of ethics laws in the process.
Take Families for Excellent Schools, a “grassroots” group that claims to be about parent engagement, yet was founded by major Wall Street players. In Connecticut, the group failed to register its Coalition for Every Child as a lobbying entity and report a multimillion-dollar ad buy expenditure and the costs of a rally in New Haven.
In Massachusetts, Families for Excellent Schools-Advocacy (FESA) recently had to cough up more than $425,000 to the Massachusetts general fund as part of a legal settlement with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance, the largest civil forfeiture in the agency’s 44-year history. Massachusetts officials concluded that FESA violated the campaign finance law by receiving contributions from individuals and then contributing those funds to the Great Schools Massachusetts Ballot Question Committee, which sought to lift the cap on the number of charter schools in the state, in a manner intended to disguise the true source of the money. As part of the settlement, the group was ordered to reveal the names of its secret donors. Jonathan Sackler was one of them.
In addition, Purdue heiress Madeleine Sackler directed the pro-charter film “The Lottery” about Eva Moskowitz and her Success Academy charter chain.
The Sacklers have used their vast wealth, derived from the opioid crisis, to burnish their family reputation and to destroy public schools.
As the Times reports, they are doing their best to get their money out of the company before it is bankrupted by lawsuits.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Disgusting that our politicians allowed themselves to be bought by Big Pharma instead of putting these “pushers” in jail!
Nobody will shed a tear for the infamous Sacklers. They have a ten billion dollar cushion waiting for them offshore, and our laws allow them to protect this much money from the settlements.
When mom and pop on Main Street go bankrupt, there is no cushion of protection for them. They lose their home and the keys to the car. This is the tragedy of America. About 66.5% of bankruptcies are tied to medical issues! That is approximately 530,000 people each year! That this tragedy mainly happens in our country should be a source of public shame that people rarely acknowledge. Vote like your life depends on it as it very well may. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/this-is-the-real-reason-most-americans-file-for-bankruptcy.html
This tells you exactly what kind of morals those that used their ill-gotten gains to support charter schools have. Their professing they care about children is like their professing that they only became billionaires pushing opioids because they care about people with pain.
I expect the Sacklers to point to a group of people who took Oxycontin after surgery and thought it was terrific. After all, those people do exist.
The Sacklers could bus a group of patients to protest at any gathering that attempts to talk about the problems with Oxycontin. Eliza Shapiro at the NY Times could writing a fawning article about those protesters and say “look how many people were helped by Oxycontin and love it, how dare anyone criticize it, it is clear the critics are racists and are part of the lawyers’ union.”
The Sacklers could commission a study done by the same co-opted researchers who do studies for the charter industry. They could get a group that took Oxycontin and say that 100% of them were helped and then they could argue that if patients dropped out of the study, it was because those patients were clearly masochists who preferred pain or long-time drug addicts whose addiction had to do with their own terrible parents or the fact that they were born addicts and had nothing to do with them taking Oxycontin as they would clearly be addicts even if they took aspirin.
How about amending the 2nd amendment to say “people have the right to arm themselves to the teeth and take as much Oxycontin as they want to protect themselves against the government and public school teachers..”
“But 24 states, led by Massachusetts and New York, have refused to sign onto the agreement, arguing that the Sacklers should pay more.”
How about the Sacklers going to jail for a few years (in addition to losing their fortune)?
Billionaires don’t go to jail
Even the rare ones like Bernie Maddoff and Jeffrey Epstein who are tried and convicted go to country clubs.
I fantasize a dinner party at a sumptuous Sackler home. Golden plates. Footmen. Chatter about charter schools. The ghosts of 200,000 people circling the room.
Among others, the Sacklers relied on Swiss Banks to transfer over a billion dollars.
Switzerland , was also famously acting as banker for the the Nazis.
And the Sackler family is Jewish.
I guess that’s what it means to be a “neutral” country.
You don’t descriminate against criminal monsters.
No more Swiss cheese for me.
These are the kinds of uber-rich drug dealers that never see the inside of a prison. That’s reserved for the poor dudes out on the corner….
I’m reading this entry at the same time I’m listening to the impeachment debate in the House. What a sad, sad state of affairs for this nation.
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Sackler Family Transferred $10 Billion Out of Purdue as Opioid Crisis Worsened | Diane Ravitch's blog