> Well, they appear to be going bankrupt already unless I'm missing something and turning over all these assets to the bankruptcy court? At least that's what the article seemed to indicate, it wasn't overly clear on the details.

No, none of the people getting immunity are filing for bankruptcy, which is one of the absolutely ridiculous parts of this settlement. Why should a bankruptcy settlement even apply to them if that's the case?

Amazing twist. Bankruptcy with all the legal protection and none of the losing all your money.

Admittedly I can't be sure of how much of their wealth is or isn't tied up in the bankruptcy--though I think the same is also true of everyone else here--but if they're anything like most others who own large companies, it represents a significant fraction of their net worth and it's about to be worthless.

Bankruptcy court is pretty much always like this, though. I remember the same kinds of things coming up during, e.g., SCO.

From a Bloomberg article I read, approximately $200 million will come from a family foundation, $3 billion will come from a forced sale of some international companies they own, and the remainder of the settlement from their vast array of trusts and other investments worth...approximately $8-9 billion dollars. So while the settlement is a large amount, it amounts to no practical impact for the family, which is why so many people think it's unjust. They will still have a huge amount of dynastic wealth and will not need to make any changes to their extravagant lifestyles whatsoever. Boohoo, the dynastic wealth will only enable the next 6 generations of Sacklers to be entitled pieces of shit instead of the next 8.

From what I understand, this bankruptcy preceding was for the company the family owned (Purdue Pharma) and they contributed some of the billions in previously captured profits from their family wealth to get to an agreement, but the balance of their family wealth remains beyond the reach of the courts.

this is the umpteenth example of why we need to shred the corporate veil. it doesn’t actually fuel innovation as it purports to do, but rather promotes a slippery slope of bad behavior by owners and executives (at the expense of customers, employees, and society at large). like many bad regulations, it’s a distortion of the risk profile for a given endeavor, which leads directly to negatively externalized, but rarely unintended, consequences.

all the sackler billions should be clawed back and commensurately redistributed to literally everyone else.

Yup. The good has to come with the bad. I can understand the motivation for things like limited liability, but if that is to exist then the individuals should not be able to extract billions from the corporation. We see this consistently. The rich and powerful justify something that benefits them by pointing out the downsides and then when the downsides rear their heads, the rich and powerful find a way to ignore them.

> they contributed some of the billions in previously captured profits from their family wealth to get to an agreement

Not even that. They agreed to give 4.3 billion dollars over the next 9 years. Given how much net worth they have, over that 9 years they will earn that much, or more, in interest. They're just giving up the next 9 years of growth, they'll still be multi-billionaires.

This settlement allows the Sackler family to keep some assets (billions?); many people have proposed that they deserve to lose everything.