Laura Codruța Kövesi, head of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), has hinted that the EU vaccine investigation has widened to the United States.
Kövesi said activities relevant to the investigation took place in both EU countries and non-EU countries.
“We have received many complaints, hundreds of complaints from citizens from different European Union member states,” she said.
The United States is one country where relevant activities took place, she told the Romanian branch of Radio Free Europe.
At the start of the COVID pandemic, the European Commission signed contracts with major vaccine manufacturers Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Astra Zeneca. The prices of the vaccines differed.
Details oif the contracts remain secret and the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has refused to release text messages exchanged with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in the run-up to the EU’s biggest vaccine procurement contract. The Commission bought €1.8 billion doses of BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. Pfizer raised the price of the vaccine from 15,50 euros to 19,50 euros per dose.
An EU official with first-hand knowledge of the negotiations told the Financial Times that the pharma companies had exploited their dominant position in the negotiations.
Von der Leyen has already been taken to task for failing to provide the text messages by the European Court of Auditors and the Ombudsman.
The budget watchdog found that the EU chief deviated from the procedure established in previous vaccine negotiations when it came to a preliminary deal with the US multinational. There would have normally been joint negotiating teams, not personal negotiations. The Commission refused to provide auditors with any documents regarding the preliminary negotiations for that specific deal.
Many questions surround the agreement. Pfizer signed 73 contracts for the distribution of its vaccine in various countries, but according to Transparency International, only five of them were published. Significant parts of these have also been deleted. “In the contracts examined, Pfizer’s interests appeared to have been consistently placed above public health requirements,” Transparency International said.
In April of 2023 a Belgian lobbyist pressed charges against von der Leyen over SMS exchanges she allegedly had with Pfizer’s chief executive, asking whether she still has them and if not, whether she has destroyed them.
