Value in dispute hundreds of millions
Ministry of Health encounters new wave of lawsuits about corona masks
January 18, 2024, 12:11 p.m
The procurement of masks during the Corona period falls on the feet of the Ministry of Health. There is a hail of new complaints from suppliers who feel they have been cheated in the procurement process.
The financial risk for the federal government due to lawsuits from suppliers of corona masks has once again increased massively. Shortly before the statute of limitations expired, a further 26 lawsuits were filed against the Federal Ministry of Health last December, reports the business magazine “Capital”, citing the responsible regional court in Bonn. The new mask lawsuits involve a total amount in dispute of around 450 million euros, a spokeswoman for the court told the magazine.
This further increases the threat of damage to the federal government. At the end of September, the Ministry of Health estimated the total value of the lawsuits already pending from mask suppliers at 988 million euros. The lawsuits revolve around a special procurement process for protective masks that the then Health Minister Jens Spahn had set up at the beginning of the corona pandemic.
In the so-called open house procedure, his ministry then refused payments to numerous suppliers, for example because it claimed quality defects in the masks or a late delivery. Many retailers have complained about this. As the court spokeswoman Capital said, a total of 175 lawsuits have been received against the federal government since mid-2020. The largest individual lawsuit is for 450 million euros.
As the magazine further reports, the Ministry of Health has now reached settlements with the plaintiffs in some of the proceedings. In a response to a small question from the then Left parliamentary group in the Bundestag, the ministry recently put the total number of comparisons at “around 80”. However, Minister Karl Lauterbach’s department did not want to specify what total costs the comparisons add up to and the total number of masks involved.
The Ministry of Health informed Bundestag member Christian Görke that “in addition to operational and business secrets, the federal government’s fiscal interests and negotiating positions are also affected in the context of future settlement agreements.” When asked by Capital, the ministry did not want to comment in more detail on the reasons for the blanket secrecy.