The journalist tracked the billionaire arts philanthropists’ role in the OxyContin scandal in his gripping bestseller, Empire of Pain. He talks about reputation laundering – and why the bad guys are still getting away with it
In December 2021, Patrick Radden Keefe travelled to London from New York to attend the Business Book of the Year award ceremony at the National Gallery. He had been shortlisted for Empire of Pain, his exhaustive portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, one of the world’s wealthiest and most secretive corporate dynasties.
For decades the Sackler name was synonymous with often extravagant art world philanthropy – since 2009, the Sackler Trust had given around £170m to art institutions in Britain alone. Of late, though, it has been tarnished by its association with OxyContin, the addictive painkiller at the heart of the ongoing opioid epidemic in America that has claimed around 500,000 lives there. Keefe’s book, which is about to be published in paperback, reveals in forensic detail how the Sacklers’ vast fortune was built in part on the profits made by their company, Purdue Pharma, which manufactured and aggressively marketed OxyContin to physicians who prescribed it in often dangerously high doses. It is an epic, intricately structured tale of obsession, greed and dizzying corporate irresponsibility, which has been lauded by the critics, awarded the 2021 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction and become a global bestseller.
