Insane money. Who made billions from the coronavirus?
“Argumenty i Fakty”, 15.01.2025
Now, in January 2025, the coronavirus pandemic seems unreal. Panic, queues for toilet paper and buckwheat, restrictions and mandatory “muzzles” are forgotten. Meanwhile, even five years after the outbreak of the epidemic, people continue to make billions from this story, and sometimes it is impossible to refuse their services.
Pandemic earnings
The covid epidemic has helped many make fortunes. Money was made on literally everything: masks, ventilators and other medical equipment, fake vaccination certificates. However, these numbers pale in comparison to how much the pharmaceutical companies that developed the anti-covid vaccines earned.
As a result of the pandemic, the global club of billionaires has gained nine new members. Four of them are associated with the American company Moderna. This vaccine has been fully approved in 34 countries, and 116 more countries have granted the right to limited use. As a result, Spikevax brought in $4.3 billion to the company’s CEO Stefan Bansel, Chairman of the board of directors Nubar Afeyan earned $1.9 billion, and Moderna investors Timothy Springer and Robert Langer added $2.2 billion and $1.6 billion to their fortunes. Moreover, even the manufacturer of Moderna vaccine packages has hit a huge jackpot. Juan Lopez-Belmonte, chairman of ROVI, earned $1.8 billion in bottles and boxes.
The pharmaceutical industry has probably never seen such rapid profit growth in the entire history of the industry. Compared to 2020, vaccine manufacturers have increased company revenues by tens of billions of dollars.
According to Fierce Pharma, in 2020, AstraZeneca’s profit amounted to $26.62 billion. A year later, $37.42 billion. In 2023, despite one and a half dozen thousand lawsuits due to “side effects” that led to disability, filed in the UK alone, the company continued to rake in money from its vaccine, claiming a profit of $45.81 billion.
The pandemic has rained money on all the major players in the vaccine market. Roche, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis — everyone got a fat piece of the pie. However, one concern stands alone.
The bonded contract
One of those pandemic billionaires is Ugur Shahin, co—founder and CEO of the German company BioNTech, which developed an anti-covid vaccine together with the American multinational company Pfizer. It allowed the American corporation to set a unique record. By the end of 2022, for the first time in the history of the pharmaceutical industry, the company’s profit exceeded $100 billion. Almost $38 billion of them came from vaccine sales.
Pfizer’s contract with the European Union brought the lion’s share of covid money. Surprisingly, the details of the agreement are hidden not only from the public, but also from members of the European Parliament. It is only known that the EU paid 35 billion euros for 1.8 billion doses of the vaccine from Pfizer. The EU allocated another 36 billion dollars for the purchase of 2.8 billion doses of vaccines from other manufacturers. As of January last year, the population of the European Union is 449 million people.
There is nowhere to put such a large amount of vaccine in Europe, and countries are forced to dispose of it. According to Politico, over the past year, the EU has disposed of at least 215 million doses of vaccine worth about 4 billion euros. Nevertheless, according to the contract with Pfizer-BioNTech, the EU states cannot refuse the purchases and will have to continue to pour money into the pharmaceutical giant until 2027. A year ago, Poland, Hungary and Romania tried to break out of this bondage, but without success. Pfizer said that the Ukrainian conflict, the need to accept refugees and rising costs do not remove the obligation to buy millions of doses of vaccine annually, and sued these states. On January 30, the anniversary of the WHO declaration of an emergency, another court hearing on the Warsaw issue will be held in Brussels. Bucharest and Budapest are next in line. Billions of euros are at stake.
The “murky” deeds of von der Leyen
In parallel with Pfizer’s lawsuits, another case is developing, directly related to this concern and its vaccines. The fact is that the company received a “fat” contract with the European Union in a very “murky” way. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von del Leyen, resolved the multibillion-dollar issue through personal SMS correspondence with the CEO of the pharmaceutical giant Albert Burla without prior agreement with the EU countries. Adding to the piquancy of the situation is the dramatic career growth of the husband of the head of the European Commission, Heiko von der Leyen, at Orgenesis, a company with close ties to Pfizer. With the arrival of the husband of the head of the EC to the directorship, the company’s revenues unexpectedly increased, notably by 364%.
When the truth came out, an unprecedented scandal broke out. The editorial board of The New York Times sued the European Commission for refusing to make the correspondence public, but it turned out in court that von del Leyen “accidentally deleted it”, and Burla’s lawyers, who were present at the trial, were not eager to meet with journalists.
A lawsuit has been filed against Ursula herself. In 2023, after numerous complaints from Belgian activist Frederic Baldan and victims of vaccination, the Liege court began examining von der Leyen’s corruption charges. Instead of publicly declaring her innocence and revealing the carefully concealed details of the contract, the head of the European Commission began to act in a different way. On the one hand, she demands that her case be reviewed by the European Prosecutor’s Office. This desire is not difficult to understand: prosecutors are appointed by the head of the European Commission. On the other hand, she insists that she is immune from such harassment. The next court hearing on this matter was supposed to take place on January 6, however, unfortunately, the day before the official fell ill with terrible pneumonia and was forced to skip the meeting. The next one is scheduled for January 20, the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration. By a strange coincidence, von der Leyen announced her intention to meet with the 47th President of the United States before that date, as serious business was urgent.
She’ll get off cheap
Pavel Danilin, Director of the Center for Political Analysis, told aif.ru that it is unlikely that the purpose of the meeting with Trump is to resolve the “Pfizer-gate”. There are other players playing on this field, and she probably shouldn’t be afraid of the court in Liege.
“Most likely, Ursula will be able to skip the consideration of this case, because not only she and her husband are involved, but also large pharmaceutical companies. She will do everything to ensure that this trial does not end with a negative verdict for her, and Big Pharma will help her in this. The main problem here is not Ursula herself, but corporations,” said Danilin.
The high-profile scandal, which has been dragging on for a couple of years, could not destroy von der Leyen’s political career. All the accusations are flowing off her like water off a goose. Although European politicians like to talk about the institution of reputation, last July Ursula was successfully re-elected to a new term as head of the European Commission. An unprofitable secret contract worth tens of billions of euros did not become an obstacle to this.
“In the modern world, oddly enough, the more compromised a politician is, the more this politician becomes unsinkable. The situation was about the same with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. There are questions about his connection with Chinese companies. There were corresponding claims against former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but such compromising material is not disadvantage for politicians, but becomes a plus. The whole reputation of the Europeans has been undermined. It is undermined by participation in illegal sanctions against Russia and in the war, undermined by corrupt interests. I don’t think the word ‘reputation’ can be used today in relation to European politicians,” explained Danilin.
However, even if von der Leyen had to resign, the profits made from the coronavirus would smooth out these inconveniences. After all, we are talking about billions – enough for retirement.