“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 further details will be made public at this stage,” adds EPPO.
At the height of the pandemic, the European Commission negotiated and concluded contracts for a joint purchase of hundreds of millions of vaccine doses with pharmaceutical companies on behalf of the 27 EU member states.
Which part of the process is under investigation has not been specified. Earlier criticism, however, focused on delivery delays and contract details made partially public online.
More than the majority of the doses were purchased or reserved for the American-German duo Pfizer/BioNTech (an agreement to purchase up to 1.8 billion doses from spring 2021 and estimated at the time at 35 billion euros, Ed), but five other manufacturers have seen 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 boss 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.
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.
An agreement with BioNTech / Pfizer for the purchase of up to 1.8 billion doses from spring 2021 and estimated at the time at 35 billion euros (34.1 billion dollars) was notably publicly announced. examined.
In a report released in September, the European Court of Auditors (ECA), the European Union’s top budget watchdog, said it had not received any of the requested information regarding the preliminary negotiations.
