Texas sues Pfizer alleging it defrauded Medicaid with ineffective drug

[EndtheMadnessNow]

The bill for EVERYTHING is coming...

It took a while, but the bill finally came.

U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is taking the Polish government to court over missing payments for 60 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine it developed with BioNTech.

The lawsuit, which comes as Poland prepares for a change in government following its October election, marks the culmination of a 19-month struggle between Warsaw and Pfizer over a glut of vaccine doses.

But the roots of the clash can be traced back further: to the enormous 1.1 billion-dose contract the European Commission signed with Pfizer in 2021, which has become controversial for the reported exchange of text messages between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in the run-up to negotiations.

"Pfizer and BioNTech are seeking to hold Poland to its commitments for COVID-19 vaccine orders placed by the Polish Government, as part of their contract to supply the European Union signed in May 2021," a spokesperson for Pfizer told POLITICO, adding that BioNTech is also joining the proceedings.

According to Polish newspaper Gazeta Prawa, Pfizer brought the civil case before a Brussels court because the doses were purchased through EU joint procurement contracts, drawn up under Belgian law.

With the first hearing reportedly set to take place on December 6, here's a look at how we got to this point.

As vaccination rates flatlined, countries outside the Central and Eastern European group started joining the call for a renegotiation. At one point capitals even began asking for greater transparency on the original negotiations between Pfizer and the Commission. “What was promised? We would really like to know,” said Belgian ambassador Pierre Cartuyvels in December 2022.

Full article: Pfizer is suing Poland over vaccines

In an interview in April 2021, von der Leyen revealed she had exchanged texts with Bourla for a month when they were negotiating a massive vaccine contract.

But in response to a public access request by a journalist because of the importance of the deal, the Commission did not share the texts, triggering accusations of maladministration by the EU's ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly.

"The Commission can confirm that the search undertaken by the President's cabinet for relevant text messages corresponding to the request for access to documents has not yielded any results," the EU justice commissioner Vera Jourova said in the letter to the ombudsman, an EU watchdog.

In the letter, the Commission argues that text messages do not need to be registered and stored because they are treated as "short-lived, ephemeral documents". The same exception to the general registration requirement applies to documents with no important information, the letter said.

A spokesperson for the ombudsman said that it planned to publish a detailed analysis on the matter in the next couple of weeks.

The deal, negotiated via text messages and calls, according to what von der Leyen herself said in her interview with the New York Times, was the biggest contract ever sealed for COVID-19 vaccines, with the EU committing to buy 900 million Pfizer-BioNTech (PFE.N), (22UAy.DE) shots, with an option to buy another 900 million.

When the deal was formally announced in May 2021, the EU had already secured hundreds of millions of vaccines from several drugmakers, including another 600 million doses from Pfizer and BioNTech under two previous contracts with the two companies.

The deal was backed by all EU governments but was later called into question by some of them who are now trying to renegotiate or cut supplies from Pfizer and other vaccine makers amid a slump in vaccination and growing risks of wastage read more.

EU's von der Leyen can't find texts with Pfizer chief on vaccine deal

Aristocrat von der Leyen is in the same league as that Illuminati queen Christine Lagarde.