A former senior partner at McKinsey & Company was sentenced on Friday to six months in federal prison for destroying records of the firm’s work to “turbocharge” Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin sales during the opioid crisis.
Martin Elling, 60, pleaded guilty in January to obstruction of justice related to criminal investigations into McKinsey’s consulting work with opioid manufacturers. McKinsey last year agreed to pay $650 million to settle those probes.
“Today’s sentencing sends a resounding message: those who attempt to obstruct justice and conceal the truth – no matter how senior, sophisticated, or well-connected – will be held accountable,” Leah Foley, US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a statement.
In a statement, Elling’s legal team confirmed the sentencing and said he is “extremely sorry.”
“He intends to spend the remainder of his life seeking to regain the trust of those whom he disappointed with his conduct, by supporting his family and friends and giving back to the less fortunate, as he has done for the past decades,” his lawyers told The Post.
Elling’s sentencing took place at a federal courthouse in Abingdon, Va., a town in Appalachia – one of the regions hit hardest by the opioid crisis, which killed more than 42,000 people across the country in 2016 alone, according to the National Library of Medicine.
Purdue Pharma engaged McKinsey in 2013 to drive OxyContin revenue and “turbocharge” sales, according to court documents.
Elling, who was also ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service and pay a $40,000 fine, served as the director of the team for about 30 of McKinsey’s engagements with the pharma giant, according to the Department of Justice.
In 2018, Elling emailed another senior partner with concerns that a Purdue board member was being sued by state attorneys general.
“It probably makes sense to have a quick conversation with the risk committee to see if we should be doing anything other [than] eliminating all our documents and emails. Suspect not but as things get tougher there someone might turn to us,” Elling wrote.
A forensic analysis found that Elling had deleted materials from his company-issued laptop related to their work with Purdue – after seemingly emailing himself a reminder.
The subject line of a 2018 email to himself read “When home,” and the items listed included: “deleted old pur documents from laptop,” according to court documents.
He later emailed himself another reminder: “Remove Pur folder from garbage,” according to the analysis.
Elling was fired from McKinsey in 2020.
The consulting firm in December apologized for its work with Purdue and “the actions of a former partner who deleted documents related to his work for that client.”
Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Elling to a year in prison.
“This is a rare case: a well-educated senior partner at one of the world’s foremost consulting companies was caught destroying documents relating to the investigation of OxyContin, a powerful opioid narcotic drug, against the tragic backdrop of the opioid crisis,” prosecutors said in a memo signed by Randy Ramseyer.
Ramseyer led a probe into Purdue in 2007 that secured guilty pleas from its executives for misleading doctors and patients about OxyContin risks.
McKinsey, one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world, employs more than 700 senior partners who are typically paid millions of dollars a year.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
