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Comment by estaseuropano | Hacker News Reader

> The Sacklers have faced allegations, which they deny, that they authorized the financial transfers to prevent the money from being drained in future litigation against Purdue. The Sacklers have said much of the money went toward taxes and investments, as opposed to their pockets.

The money went to investments (which bring us more cash later) and taxes (which we have to pay anyway). What an awful defense, these people are completely clueless or simply don't care about the rest of the world.

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I think when your family has billions of dollars you become willing to lie and cheat or worse to keep it.

This is why I advocate for cooperatively owned and managed firms, so profits spread more widely through the economy and billionaires are less likely to exist in the first place. I can only imagine the extent of the distortions to everyone else's economy caused by the super powerful vying for their own interests. It makes as much sense to me as having kings.

> simply don't care about the rest of the world.

If you want definition of vile person/family look for some videos on YT on Sackler's family and their 'business' practices.

Ah yes, the "I didn't keep the money, I used it to buy a boat" defense.

While this is clearly very immoral, is it actually illegal?

I am not aware of anything that stops the common pattern of using a company to do something dubious (eg. sell opiods), then drain all the profits by paying dividends to shareholders or IP license fees to another company, only later to be sued or fined for the behaviour, but there is no money left to pay the fine.

Is such a practice illegal? Is there any way in law to claw the money back from shareholders or the other company, especially if it cannot be shown they were aware of the dubious behaviour?

One solution to this problem is to require all companies hold "bankruptcy fine insurance". The insurance policy would pay government fines or court liabilities that the company was unable to pay.

Then, the insurance company would price the insurance policy based on the practices of the company, and could price the insurance very high for companies who refused to abide by stricter accounting standards and maintain money reserves to handle such future issues.

An interesting idea, and maybe a good one.

One side effect? Societal harm by tech companies these days, far outweighs the opid crisis.

So, will insurance end up affecting us too? And Google, Facebook can pay. But what about the little startup, trying to grow, 2 guys in a garage, but now they need insurance?

I suppose it could only be a requirement once at $x size...

I am having trouble seeing US tech companies more harm than 500,000 dead people and significantly more devastated lives in the US alone. Perdue isn’t responsible for 100% of those deaths but it’s still quite significant for just one company.

"One side effect? Societal harm by tech companies these days, far outweighs the opioid crisis."

No.

Really?

Civil war caused by Facebook policies, death of dissidents due to cooperation with fascist states, COVID deaths due to anti-vaxxers / lies, all of the above, and more, enabled by tech platforms purposefully fanning the flames, for profit.

Really, the solution to corporate mischief is not more and bigger corporations.

Seems like it could be fraudulent conveyance [0], but generally conviction only results in civil penalties.

[0]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fraudulentconveyance.as...

It's called piercing the corporate veil.

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