Tension has risen sharply between Medista, the company responsible for distributing vaccines once morest Covid and the Federal Minister of Health, Frank Vandenbroucke.
Indeed, the company Medista has made it known in a press release that it no longer wants to collaborate with the Belgian government. Without a ready solution, Frank Vandenbroucke (Vooruit) took legal action.
“We no longer want to work for an untrustworthy government that abuses its power,” said CEO Sarah Taybi in a statement relayed by our colleagues from Het Laatste Nieuws. “We have been harassed for months by a senior official of the FPS Public Health and the minister tolerates it. He does not even have him examined.”
The conflict between the company and the Belgian government comes from a problem of invoices. It would appear that as of mid-August, year-old bills had still not been paid by the government. A total of 4.8 million was to be paid to Medista.
“Two weeks ago (early September), they suddenly paid 3.5 million euros but in the form of a conditional payment,” says Sarah Taybi. “So they can still claim back. The Minister can now say publicly that he has paid, when he knows that in principle we cannot use this money. The government is trying to smoke us out financially. This is unacceptable .”
The vaccine distribution company then issued an ultimatum to Frank Vandenbroucke and his cabinet. The conditional payment had to be converted into a final payment or the company would stop supplying vaccines to hospitals and vaccination centres. And if there is stock in these, there is much less in hospitals.
Faced with this threat, the government felt stuck because their new partner distributing vaccines, Movianto, is not yet ready to take over from Medista. Vandenbroucke therefore took legal action, which issued a court order, forcing the Medista company to continue working with the government until February 2023. If the company does not cooperate, it must pay a fine of 250,000 euros per violation. “Even if we are not paid properly, we must continue to work”, still plague CEO Sarah Taybi.
