European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen got a slap on the hand for her backdoor vaccine deals with Pfizer from a European court.
The New York Times reported how von der Leyen secured Pfizer Covid vaccines for the whole of Europe with texts messages with Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla. The Times requested those texts and the European Commission rejected that request, saying that they didn’t have them. The Times says that they do have them and the court agrees, ruling they must hand them over.
The court also ruled that the EU “has not given a plausible explanation to justify the non-possession of the requested documents. Moreover, the Commission has not sufficiently clarified whether the requested text messages were deleted and, if so, whether the deletion was done deliberately or automatically or whether the President’s mobile phone had been replaced in the meantime.”
In other words: They were being shady.
This is the second time von der Leyen was caught deleting things from her phone. When she was Germany’s Defense Minister, she was investigated for military contracts and when officials searched her phones, they’d been wiped.
The European Commission has responded to this ruling saying that they’re sorry and the court is right, they should be more transparent. They have not committed to handing over the messages though.
