Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused

Purdue Pharma, the company that planted the seeds of the opioid epidemic through its aggressive marketing of OxyContin, has long claimed it was unaware of the powerful opioid painkiller’s growing abuse until years after it went on the market.

A confidential Justice Department report found the company was aware early on that OxyContin was being crushed and snorted for its powerful narcotic, but continued to promote it as less addictive. read more »

The financial scandal no one is talking about

Accountancy used to be boring – and safe. But today it’s neither. Have the ‘big four’ firms become too cosy with the system they’re supposed to be keeping in check?

In the summer of 2015, seven years after the financial crisis and with no end in sight to the ensuing economic stagnation for millions of citizens, I visited a new club. Nestled among the hedge-fund managers on Grosvenor Street in Mayfair, Number Twenty had recently been opened by accountancy firm KPMG. It was, said the firm’s then UK chairman Simon Collins in the fluent corporate-speak favoured by today’s top accountants, “a West End space” for clients “to meet, mingle and touch down”. The cost of the 15-year lease on the five-storey building was undisclosed, but would have been many tens of millions of pounds. It was evidently a price worth paying to look after the right people.

Inside, Number Twenty is patrolled by a small army of attractive, sharply uniformed serving staff. On one floor are dining rooms and cabinets stocked with fine wines. On another, a cocktail bar leads out on to a roof terrace. Gazing down on the refreshed executives are neo-pop art portraits of the men whose initials form today’s KPMG: Piet Klynveld (an early 20th-century Amsterdam accountant), William Barclay Peat and James Marwick (Victorian Scottish accountants) and Reinhard Goerdeler (a German concentration-camp survivor who built his country’s leading accountancy firm). read more »

European firms are increasingly tackling the scourge of bribery

Governments in Europe are catching up with America in pursuing corporate graft

One of the more extreme recent cases of corporate bribery is that of LafargeHolcim, a giant Swiss-French cement-maker which was accused in 2016 of funnelling money to armed groups controlling roads and checkpoints around a factory in Syria. The firm still cannot be sure who pocketed its payoffs, via middlemen, that were intended to keep its facility running at all costs. The money may well have ended up funding Islamic State terrorists.

The investigation into LafargeHolcim is one sign of a wider change. The era when European firms could talk up lengthy “ethics codes” at home and behave badly abroad is over. Long gone are the days when German law counted bribes paid by the country’s industrial champions as tax-deductible. A spate of scandals in Europe suggest that prosecutors, as well as the politicians who influence how much freedom judicial investigators enjoy, are becoming ever less tolerant of corporate corruption. read more »

Doctor Convicted in $8.9 Million Health Care Fraud Scheme

A federal jury found a physician guilty today for her role in a scheme involving approximately $8.9 million in fraudulent Medicare claims for home health care and other physician services that were procured through the payment of kickbacks, were not medically necessary, not actually provided or, in some cases, were provided by the defendant, who was not a licensed physician during the conspiracy.

Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider of the Eastern District of Michigan, Special Agent in Charge Timothy Slater of the FBI’s Detroit Division and Special Agent in Charge Lamont Pugh III of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General’s (HHS-OIG) Chicago Regional Office made the announcement.

Millicent Traylor, 47, of West Bloomfield, Michigan, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud, one count of conspiracy to pay and receive kickbacks in connection with Medicare beneficiaries, and five counts of health care fraud following a four-day trial.  Sentencing has been scheduled for Sept. 27, before U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland of the Eastern District of Michigan, who presided over the trial. 

According to evidence presented at trial, from 2011 to 2016, Traylor and her co-conspirators engaged in a scheme to defraud Medicare of approximately $8.9 million through fraudulent home health and physician claims.  The evidence showed that Traylor, who was unlicensed at the time, acted as a physician for these companies, providing services that were not medically necessary and that were billed to Medicare as if they were provided by a licensed physician. The evidence further showed that Traylor conspired to cause billing to Medicare for services that were not rendered. read more »