Here are three recent examples of corrupt corporate behavior. They show the breadth of greed-driven corporate corruption from seriously harming public health to illegal market manipulation to criminal money laundering. (This previous post highlighted three other examples.)
Example #1: As one of the most egregious cases of corporate corruption moves toward an end, Purdue Pharma (the maker and incredibly corrupt promoter of the addictive, opioid pain killer OxyContin) has pleaded guilty to criminal charges. It has admitted to:
- Impeding the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in its efforts to stem the crisis of opioid addiction,
- Failing to have effective procedures to prevent diversion of prescription OxyContin to the black market while assuring the DEA that it did,
- Lying to the DEA to get approval to produce greater amounts of OxyContin, and
- Paying kickbacks to doctors and engaging in other illegal schemes to get doctors to increase their prescribing of OxyContin.
These guilty pleas were part of a settlement of criminal and civil charges with the federal Department of Justice that will require the company to pay $8.3 billion in penalties and forfeitures over a number of years. The majority of this money will go to state, local, and tribal governments to pay for treatment and prevention of opioid addiction. Over the last 20 years, the opioid crisis has contributed to over 470,000 deaths in the U.S. and it appears to be getting worse during the coronavirus pandemic. [1] The $8.3 billion amount, if calculated on a per death basis, values each death at less than $18,000, without including any calculation of the harm to those who have or are suffering from OxyContin-related drug abuse but have, so far, survived.
Attorneys general of about half of the states are opposing the settlement, asking for harsher penalties for the company and particularly for the members of the Sackler family who owned and controlled Purdue. Under current settlement provisions, the very wealthy Sackler family will pay only $225 million to settle civil charges. No criminal charges have been filed against them, although that is still a possibility. (Here’s a previous post with more details about Purdue.)
Example #2: Teva Pharmaceutical has been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with conspiring to fix prices and manipulate the market for generic drugs. The criminal charges allege that these actions resulted in at least $350 million in overcharges over a 3 ½ year period. Five other generic drug makers that were also part of this investigation have pleaded guilty and have agreed to pay a total of $426 million to settle the charges against them. Teva and these other companies are also facing civil lawsuits by states’ attorneys general and others. [2]
Teva fills 10% of the generic drug prescriptions in the U.S. and a criminal conviction could lead to it being banned from doing business with Medicare and Medicaid. A conviction would also weaken its defense against the civil lawsuits.
Example #3: At least $100 billion a year of cash flows through U.S. banks that is abetting tax dodging, fraud, corruption, or money laundering for drug dealers, terrorists, and other unsavory individuals and entities. Banks are required to file Suspicious Activity Reports for transactions that may involve criminal activity. Typically, these reports are not public but over 2,000 of them were recently leaked and they identified over 18,000 suspicious transactions between 1999 and 2017. And this may just be the tip of the iceberg. Banks report these suspicious transactions but go ahead and process them (instead of blocking them) because they earn significant fees on them. Almost half of the suspicious money flowed through Deutsche Bank’s U.S. subsidiary, but just about every prominent U.S. bank was involved. [3]
Exacerbating the problem is the fact that often the corporations that conduct these cash transfers are created and registered in states, notably Delaware, or offshore tax havens (e.g., Cayman Islands and the Virgin Islands) where disclosure of the true owner(s) of the corporation (those who will benefit from its activities) is not required. This combination of corrupt banks, weak banking regulations, and lax corporate registration requirements has led to the U.S. being one of the preferred global destinations for tainted money.
One of the frequent activities of these shell companies (i.e., companies with unidentified owners and no purpose other than to facilitate anonymous movement of cash) is to purchase high-end real estate. A large portion of luxury real estate in Boston and Seattle, for example, is purchased by shell companies, often with cash (i.e., no mortgage loan). Experiments with temporary local transparency rules, such as requiring the disclosure of the true owners on cash real estate transactions of over $1 million, has resulted in declines in such transactions of 70% to 95%. Legislation has been introduced in Congress to require full disclosure of the beneficial owner(s) of all corporations but it is not making any progress.
Clearly, to prevent corrupt corporate behavior, the U.S. needs stronger regulation of corporations, from its biggest banks to drug companies to shell corporations. Without it, greed runs wild and corrupt U.S. corporations will aid and abet drug dealing, terrorism, and harm to the health and financial well-being of mainstream Americans. These corrupt activities also, of course, result in the rich in getting richer at the expense of everyday Americans.
[1] Mulvihill, G., 11/25/20, “OxyContin maker Purdue pleads guilty to criminal charges,” The Boston Globe from the Associated Press
[2] Griffin, R., 8/27/20, “Teva fights US claims of price fixing,” The Boston Globe from Bloomberg News
[3] Collins, C., 9/21/20, “FinCen files shine spotlight on suspicious bank transfers,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/09/21/fincen-files-shine-spotlight-suspicious-bank-transfers)
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