The European public prosecutor’s office announced on Friday that it had opened an investigation into the purchase of anti-COVID vaccines in the European Union, without further details.
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“The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (or EPPO) confirms that it has an ongoing investigation into the acquisition of anti-COVID vaccines in the EU”, he said in a press release broadcast on social networks.
“This exceptional confirmation comes due to extremely high public interest (on this issue). No other details will be made public at this stage,” adds the EPPO.
Faced with the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic which reached Europe in early 2020, the European Commission had decided to proceed with the joint purchase of vaccines on behalf of the 27 Member States.
More than the majority of the doses have been purchased or reserved for the American-German duo Pfizer/BioNTech, but five other manufacturers have had their vaccines approved by the European regulator (Moderna, AstraZeneca, Janssen, Novavax and Valneva).
NGOs and MEPs have criticized the fact that key aspects of the contracts remain confidential.
An exchange of text messages between the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of Pfizer Albert Bourla, revealed by the New York Times, sparked controversy and even led the EU ombudsman to intervene.
Faced with the refusal by the Commission services to a journalist who asked to know the content, the ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, considered this summer that the public should be able to have access to the text messages exchanged by the EU institutions. under the same conditions as for the other European working documents.
Asked by AFP, a spokesperson for the Commission argued that Ms von der Leyen had exchanged text messages with the CEO of Pfizer “just as she had exchanges with the CEOs of other companies” in order to convince them to supply EU ‘in accordance with procedures’.
But the head of the European executive “did not negotiate the contracts” with the pharmaceutical companies, added the spokesperson.
He explained that these negotiations had been supervised on the EU side by a steering committee involving “representatives of the Commission and of all the Member States”. The latter “had the possibility of withdrawing from the contract”, according to him.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office, officially established in 2021, is an independent EU body responsible for combating fraud once morest EU funds and any other offense affecting its financial interests (corruption, money laundering, cross-border fraud VAT).
This supranational body is responsible for investigating, but also for prosecuting and bringing to justice the perpetrators of such offenses, an unprecedented power which the European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) did not have.