In a significant development, Martin Elling, a former partner at McKinsey & Co, pleaded guilty on Friday to obstructing justice by destroying records. These records were related to advice he and the consulting firm offered to Purdue Pharma on how to "turbocharge" the sales of the opioid painkiller, OxyContin.

Elling, aged 60, entered his plea in a federal court located in Abingdon, Virginia, just a month after the US Department of Justice announced that McKinsey had agreed to pay $650 million to resolve charges associated with its work for Purdue, a pharmaceutical company based in Connecticut.

As per the terms of his plea agreement, Elling faces a potential sentence of up to a year in prison, with sentencing set for April 4. His legal team, including attorney Marjorie Peerce, expressed in a joint statement that Elling "sincerely regrets his conduct for which he has fully accepted responsibility".

This case is the culmination of years of investigations and litigation concerning Purdue's role as a leading manufacturer of OxyContin, a highly profitable narcotic, in the onset of the opioid addiction epidemic in the United States. Purdue's actions were seen as a catalyst in this crisis, which was compounded by the contributions of other drugmakers. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 727,000 opioid overdose deaths occurred from 1999 to 2022.

Acting US Attorney Zachary Lee from the western district of Virginia commented, “Today’s guilty plea moves us forward in holding accountable not only those corporations responsible for the opioid crisis in America but also the executives who contributed to the tragedy.”

The charges against McKinsey and Elling emerged after Purdue's own guilty plea in 2020 to charges of widespread misconduct related to the marketing and sale of prescription painkillers. This was part of a broader legal struggle against Purdue.

Prosecutors highlighted that Elling played a role in helping McKinsey secure work for Purdue in 2013, resulting in the New York-based consulting firm devising a strategy to enhance sales of OxyContin. This strategy included targeting "high-value" prescribers in the medical field, even those who prescribed opioids for illegitimate uses.

Charging documents revealed that Elling was among a select few McKinsey partners who took part in an August 2013 meeting with members of the Sackler family, who owned Purdue Pharma, and ultimately adopted McKinsey's proposal.

In July 2018, after reading a news article about a lawsuit filed by Massachusetts' Attorney General Maura Healey, now the state's governor, who took a particularly strong stance against Purdue concerning its marketing of OxyContin, Elling emailed another McKinsey partner. He suggested, “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,” according to court papers.

A month later, Elling sent an email to himself instructing to “delete old pur [Purdue Pharma] documents from laptop,” as stated in the charging papers. Prosecutors noted that a forensic analysis of his laptop confirmed he had indeed deleted materials pertinent to investigations of Purdue.