The European Public Prosecutor’s Workplace has opened an investigation into the EU’s coronavirus vaccine purchases, an announcement that will refocus consideration on European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen’s function within the matter.
The EPPO is an unbiased EU physique liable for investigating and prosecuting monetary crimes, together with fraud, cash laundering and corruption. In its announcement on Friday, the EPPO did not specify who was being investigated, or which of the EU’s vaccine contracts had been underneath scrutiny.
Nevertheless, two different watchdog businesses have beforehand drawn consideration to at least one specific deal involving high-level contacts between Pfizer’s management and von der Leyen.
“This distinctive affirmation comes after the extraordinarily excessive public curiosity. No additional particulars will probably be made public at this stage,” stated the EPPO in its brief announcement.
In April 2021, the New York Occasions first reported on textual content messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla within the run-up to the EU’s largest vaccine procurement contract — for as much as 1.8 billion doses of BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. The deal can be price as much as €35 billion if absolutely exercised, based on leaked vaccine costs.
In January this yr, the EU’s ombudsman charged the Fee with maladministration for failing to search for the textual content messages in response to a freedom of knowledge request. With out confirming the existence of the texts, the Fee argued in its response that “short-lived, ephemeral paperwork usually are not saved.” It stated {that a} seek for the textual content messages hadn’t yielded any outcomes.
Then, final month, the European Court docket of Auditors printed a report the place it stated the Fee refused to reveal any particulars of von der Leyen’s private function within the talks regarding the Pfizer contract.
The price range watchdog discovered that the EU chief deviated from the playbook established in earlier vaccine negotiations to personally hash out a preliminary cope with the U.S. multinational, as an alternative of counting on joint negotiating groups. Not like with any of the opposite contracts, the Fee refused to offer the courtroom with any paperwork concerning the preliminary negotiations for that particular deal.
In response to the announcement, Belgian Socialist MEP Kathleen van Brempt said that “a number of features” of the Pfizer contract should be appeared into, together with “the textual content messages between the Fee President and the truth that there isn’t any paper path of the preliminary negotiations in first occasion.”
The MEP chairs the European Parliament’s particular committee on COVID-19. Each the EU’s ombudsman and a member of the European Court docket of Auditors have appeared earlier than the panel, the place they answered questions on the subject of the textual content messages.
“The [COVID-19] committee will probably be following this case with nice consideration,” stated van Brempt.
An EU well being division official stated the Fee had “no remark to make at this stage.”
