{"id":15575,"date":"2025-05-23T04:18:20","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T04:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=15575"},"modified":"2025-05-23T04:18:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T04:18:20","slug":"former-mckinsey-partner-jailed-for-deleting-emails-on-us-opioid-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=15575","title":{"rendered":"Former McKinsey partner jailed for deleting emails on US opioid work"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A former senior partner at McKinsey has been sentenced to six months in prison for deleting documents on the consulting firm\u2019s work for opioids manufacturer Purdue Pharma.<\/p>\n

Martin Elling pleaded guilty in January to a single charge of obstruction of justice, admitting he erased more than 100 computer files related to his work for Purdue after prosecutors began investigating the drugmaker\u2019s role in an epidemic of opioid addiction ravaging the US.<\/p>\n

Elling was on a team of McKinsey consultants who advised Purdue, the maker of OxyContin, on how to \u201cturbocharge\u201d sales of the painkiller. Purdue had hired McKinsey in 2013 to help revive sales of the painkiller, and Elling helped win the business and lead the team that devised the strategy, which involved aggressive marketing to doctors who liberally prescribed the drug, according to federal prosecutors. <\/p>\n

In August 2018, after news reports that US authorities were investigating the company, Elling emailed himself a to-do list with the subject line \u201cWhen home\u201d that included the item \u201cdelete old pur [Purdue Pharma] documents from laptop\u201d, according to court filings. <\/p>\n

A forensic analysis showed that a folder named \u201cPurdue\u201d disappeared along with more than 100 documents. Prosecutors said the deletions were intended to shield evidence about his and McKinsey\u2019s role in the US public health crisis stemming from opioid addiction, which has led to nearly 1mn deaths since the turn of the century. <\/p>\n

McKinsey has paid about $1.6bn to settle an array of legal claims that its work for opioid manufacturers contributed to the addiction crisis, including a $650mn deferred prosecution agreement with the US justice department in December. The firm has said its opioid work was a source of \u201cprofound regret\u201d and that it has since revamped risk management processes.<\/p>\n

Elling was on Thursday sentenced to six months in prison plus 1,000 hours of community service over two years of supervised release, according to a spokesperson for his lawyers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMartin fully accepts responsibility for his conduct, for which he is extremely sorry,\u201d his legal team said in a statement. \u201cHe intends to spend the remainder of his life seeking to regain the trust of those whom he disappointed with his conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prosecutors had argued for a 12-month sentence, \u201cto send a message to white-collar defendants that they are not above the law, and to deter others from attempting to evade responsibility by destroying evidence\u201d.<\/p>\n

Elling\u2019s attorney, Thomas Bondurant, wrote in a filing ahead of sentencing that his client \u201csincerely regrets his actions, he understands their severity, and he fully accepts their consequences\u201d, and that he had \u201calready paid a great price for his actions\u201d.<\/p>\n

Elling was fired by McKinsey in 2021 after the disclosure of an internal email in which Elling discussed deleting documents. Bondurant said that a prison term would mean Elling could not return to Thailand, where he has been living since 2019.<\/p>\n

Some of the firm\u2019s most senior former executives weighed in as character witnesses, including former managing partner Kevin Sneader, and Elling\u2019s attorneys called his actions \u201can extraordinary aberration\u201d in a 30-year McKinsey career.<\/p>\n

Sneader, who led McKinsey as its global managing partner from 2018 to 2021 and is now an executive at Goldman Sachs, called Elling \u201cgenerous; knowledgeable; well travelled; insightful\u201d in a character reference submitted to Judge Robert Ballou of the \u200bUS District Court for the Western District of Virginia.<\/p>\n

\u201cMartin was seen as a truly valued coach to 100s of colleagues who benefited from his generosity of time even though there were many more financially rewarding ways in which he could have spent the countless hours to which he devoted himself to help others succeed,\u201d Sneader wrote. <\/p>\n

Elling also attracted character references from Michael Silber, McKinsey\u2019s former chief financial officer, and Katy George, its former chief people officer who is now at Microsoft, among 39 written submissions ahead of the hearing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free A former senior partner at McKinsey has been sentenced to six months in prison for deleting documents on the consulting firm\u2019s work for opioids manufacturer Purdue Pharma. Martin Elling pleaded guilty in January to a single charge of obstruction of justice, admitting he erased more than 100 computer files<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[6367,6368,1694,3432,6369,2084,360],"class_list":{"0":"post-15575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-financial-crime","8":"tag-deleting","9":"tag-emails","10":"tag-jailed","11":"tag-mckinsey","12":"tag-opioid","13":"tag-partner","14":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}