Why are corporate fines for shady or illegal business practices so often less than the amount they made by doing those illegal practices? At that point, don’t the fines just become a cost of doing business?
Specifically thinking about Perdue Pharma. PBS article says they made $35billion pushing opioids, but the current court case is only seeking $6billion on fines. Ignoring the Sackler’s immunity request, this is still a net win.
In: 320
Purdue doesn’t really have any assets in it. All the money it has made has been taken out of the company. Many US states during the first few waves of Covid-19 were desperate for cash. The Sackler family offered to transfer $6.8b back into Purdue if the Sacklers got personal immunity. Mostly red states agreed. Courts have been split if you can do this and the Supreme Court has put it on hold before they have hearings about it.
The reason fines don’t keep up is they’re set to static values so whole it might be a lot of money, after 20 years of inflation it isn’t that much money. Corporations run the government in the USA and they don’t significant penalties for their misbehaviour so the politicans they pay don’t write large penalties into laws.
Latest Answers