Former Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn sharply condemned the alleged greed for profit of individual MPs and others in mask shops in the Corona crisis. At the beginning of the pandemic, there were countless whistleblowers about possible mask suppliers.
99.9 percent would have done this out of patriotic understanding, said the CDU politician on Friday in the mask investigation committee of the Bavarian state parliament in Munich. However, a few who are personally known to him may have acted out of selfishness. “I just find it shabby that people are getting richer in the crisis,” said Spahn.
The aim of the committee is to clarify the state government’s mask business in the pandemic, possible participation by members of parliament and sometimes high commission payments to parliamentarians. The Bavarian Ministry of Health has always emphasized that the ministry has never paid commissions to elected officials.
In addition to Spahn, there are many other politicians on the committee’s list of witnesses, including Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder.
Spahn defended the basic approach at the beginning of the corona pandemic, including taking unusual paths when procuring medical protective equipment. Masks were extremely scarce back then. “It was wild west in the mask market worldwide.”
He always passed on requests from countries like Bavaria, for example, for special approvals for individual masks, to the responsible authorities. The procedure would always have been the same, emphasized the former federal minister: he never interfered in the professional evaluation and assessment of facts.
