Exclusive
Status: 03/31/2022 6:50 p.m
The investigation into commissions from the Swiss mask supplier Emix is based on information from WDR, NDR and SZ also about excessive orders in the amount of 136 million euros by the former Health Minister Jens Spahn.
In March 2020, the Ministry of Health came up with a very special idea to get the mask shortage under control: It offered all willing suppliers to deliver FFP2 masks at a fixed purchase price of 4.50 euros per piece/mask. After just a few days, so many suppliers had registered for this so-called open house procedure that the budget of 500 million euros earmarked for it had been used up.
But more and more delivery promises kept pouring in, so that the Ministry of Health hastily shortened the offer deadline to April 8, 2020. But despite this reduction, the federal government was suddenly sitting on delivery promises for masks worth 6.4 billion euros. The Federal Court of Auditors already criticized the “massive overprocurement” of the Spahn Ministry last year.
More mask deals despite overprocurement
Investigators from the Munich public prosecutor’s office are therefore wondering why the ministry concluded further, even more expensive mask contracts with the Swiss manufacturer Emix at exactly the same time. Because while the open-house procedure was already underway, the Ministry of Health ordered a further 32 million FFP2 masks directly from Emix on March 31, 2020 at a price of EUR 5.95 each. And on April 23, another 100 million FFP2 masks for 5.40 euros each, i.e. at least 20 percent more expensive than in the open house procedure.
Overall, the investigators calculate according to information from WDR, NDR and “Süddeutsche Zeitung” alone for these two orders additional costs of 136 million euros compared to the open house deliveries. According to the public prosecutor’s office, further investigations would have to clarify why, despite an “imminent excess of demand” and exceeding the budget, a considerable number of additional masks were purchased at a significantly higher price.
Investigations against PR agency
So far, the public prosecutor’s office has only investigated the owner of the PR agency “Little Penguin”, Andrea Tandler and her business partner Darius N. Tandler is the daughter of the former CSU General Secretary Gerold Tandler, who made contact with German ministries on behalf of Emix and offered masks . In order to get to Jens Spahn, Tandler asked her friend Monika Hohlmeier (CSU), the daughter of the former Bavarian Prime Minister Franz-Josef Strauss, to mediate.
In the end, Emix managed to conclude contracts worth almost one billion euros with the Spahn Ministry. Hohlmeier has always emphasized that she received no money for it. According to the public prosecutor’s office, Tandler, on the other hand, is said to have collected commissions of 48 million euros together with her partner – just for brokering these deals and other smaller ones in Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia.
In the proceedings against the two, the public prosecutor’s office is investigating the suspicion of money laundering, as a so-called predicate offense to possible bribe payments in connection with Spahn’s purchases from Emix. The public prosecutor’s office has not yet found such payments or other evidence. Tandler and her partner also reject all allegations.
Spahn refers to allegedly “high non-compliance rate”
The topic should soon also play a role in the investigative committee of the Bavarian state parliament on the mask affair. Because the committee also invited the former Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn as witness number three.
When he was still in office, Spahn had repeatedly stated that despite the open-house procedure at Emix, orders were still being placed because the company was able to deliver protective clothing “reliably, at short notice, on time and in solid quality”. In the case of the open-house suppliers, on the other hand, it was not known how reliable they were and a “high non-compliance rate” was therefore assumed.
Lauterbach wants to review deals
On December 16, 2021, at the request of WDR, NDR and SZ explains: “I believe that we cannot leave the situation in the mask shops, especially Emix, as it is. This undermines trust in the honesty of our procurement.” At the time, Lauterbach advocated reviewing the Emix deals. “The Emix mask deals are very significant and we can’t just ignore that, we also need to look very carefully at what happened there.”
More than three months have passed since then. If you ask the ministry what it has done since then to deal with the affair, you will not find out anything concrete. Lauterbach’s spokesman, Hanno Kautz, merely points out in general that the procurement process is “transparent to the authorities” and “regularly reported to the Bundestag”.