The Berlin public prosecutor’s office is examining whether the brokers of an overpriced mask deal between the Swiss company Emix and the Federal Republic of Germany used bribes.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the Federal Republic bought FFP2 masks at extremely high prices.
Was bribery involved in overpriced mask purchases by the ministry led by the then German Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn? In any case, the Berlin public prosecutor’s office has now started investigations into suspected corruption. They are directed against the mediators of the deal, Andrea Tandler and Darius N. First, NDR, WDR and the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported on Tuesday. The public prosecutor’s office confirmed to the NZZ on Wednesday that investigations had started, but did not want to comment on the details.
At the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020, the Federal Ministry of Health bought FFP2 masks from the Swiss company Emix – albeit at overpriced unit prices. The ministry had previously guaranteed all mask dealers the purchase at a unit price of 4.50 euros as part of a so-called open-house procedure. Although the deadline for corresponding offers had not yet expired, the Christian Democrat Spahn approved the purchase of 100 million masks from Emix at a price of 5.40 euros each. With an order volume of more than half a billion euros, the additional costs compared to the guaranteed purchase price added up to a high two-digit million amount.
Spahn can no longer remember
The Federal Court of Auditors accordingly criticized the fact that “at this point in time, the delivery quantities from the open house procedure could not yet be estimated and contracts for more than 350 million (FFP2 masks) had already been concluded on the other procurement channels”. There was also talk of overprocurement. So why did the federal government accept such a high price, especially since the process was not yet over? Former Minister of Health Spahn said at the request of NDR, WDR and SZ, “that your questions in their depth of detail elude comprehensibility or memory”. In addition, he no longer has access to some of the documents mentioned. Spahn had previously tried to justify the order by assuming that the other providers had a high non-compliance rate.
In any case, for the young founders of the Emix company, the order was a real windfall: there is talk of a profit of over 300 million euros. The deal was mediated by the daughter of former CSU politician Gerold Tandler, Andrea Tandler. Your PR agency collected a whopping 48 million euros for it. The CSU MEP Monika Hohlmeier, in turn, made the decisive contact with Minister Spahn. The daughter of the former Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss denies having received any payments for this.
Should the commission be divided by three?
The Berlin prosecutors are now checking whether Tandler and her partner Darius N. kept the commission for themselves or gave part of it as a bribe. According to research by ARD, the Munich police should have recordings of telephone conversations between the two suspects, which prove that the sum should be divided by three. But who is the third person?
The Ministry of Health, which is now led by the SPD, has “no indications” of corruption. Also, you know nothing about refunds or other hidden commissions. The spokesman for the ministry said this in response to a request from NDR, WDR and SZ. The overpriced mask purchase could still have a political aftermath. “We will take a very close look at the results of the investigations in Germany and also in Switzerland,” said the parliamentary director of the SPD parliamentary group, Johannes Fechner, of the ARD. After that, the SPD wanted to “check whether a committee of inquiry will also be necessary at the federal level”.