According to two experts, millions of corona protective masks, which the Free State bought expensively in 2020, should not have been placed on the market or given to medical staff due to insufficient certificates. This applies in particular to masks from a multi-million dollar deal that came about through the mediation of Andrea Tandler, the daughter of former CSU General Secretary Gerold Tandler.
The experts Ingo Leuschner and Christian Neudecker from the ift institute in Rosenheim reported on Monday to the state parliament’s mask investigation committee that documents on the masks supplied could not be verified, were inconclusive or were otherwise unusable. Actually, “nothing was really one hundred percent correct,” said Leuschner. The experts could not say whether the masks still had an adequate protective effect, since no masks from the delivery at that time could be left to them for testing. Some of the masks from another delivery, which came about through the mediation of long-time CSU politician Alfred Sauter, could still be checked. And according to the report, this test showed that the masks did not meet the specified FFP3 protection standard.
The deal, mediated by Tandler, involved a large quantity of unusually expensive protective masks at the beginning of the 2020 pandemic, at a price of 8.90 euros per mask. The offer came from a Swiss company and had been brought to the Bavarian Ministry of Health by Tandler. The purchase came about – even if in the end masks other than those announced were delivered.
The committee chairman Winfried Bausback (CSU) announced that the report would also be made available to the Ministry of Health. There it can be checked whether one can still assert contractual rights with regard to a possible “poor performance”. Florian Siekmann (Greens) criticized that it is now official: “The Free State has paid moon prices for scrap masks.” In these cases, the ministry must now check whether money can be reclaimed. Markus Rinderspacher (SPD) criticized: “Here, millions were senselessly squandered by the CSU-Amigo economy!” Now the Ministry of Health has to sweep up the shambles and get the money back, he demanded: “We want our money back!”
It is basically not surprising that – regardless of these specific transactions – many mask certificates at the time were at least dubious. The head of the State Institute for Occupational Safety and Product Safety in the Bavarian State Office for Health and Food Safety (LGL) had reported to the committee in April that masks often had no or only incomplete documents enclosed and that initially “many forged documents were on the way”. Tandler is said to have received commissions in the millions for arranging mask shops at the beginning of the corona pandemic. She had refused to testify in the mask investigation committee. The aim of the committee is to clarify mask business by the state government in the corona pandemic, possible participation by members of parliament and sometimes high commission payments to parliamentarians. The Ministry of Health has repeatedly emphasized that in no case had commissions been paid by the Ministry to elected officials. In addition, it should be clarified whether the masks, many of which were distributed to medical staff, among others, were of the necessary quality to reduce the risk of infection.