The Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office on Thursday last week indicted a woman surnamed Chen (陳) and a self-proclaimed vaccine broker surnamed Lee (李) on charges of defrauding the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation out of US$30 million by falsely claiming that they could supply COVID-19 vaccines.
In 2021, Chen and Lee reportedly approached Tzu Chi and said they could procure Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT) COVID-19 vaccines, prosecutors said. Tzu Chi commissioned a consulting firm represented by Chen to procure 5 million doses and paid a US$30 million commission.
Prosecutors in April and May carried out searches and questioned 28 suspects and witnesses, and confiscated more than NT$1.12 billion (US$34.7 million) in suspected illicit gains.
Chen, Lee and 15 alleged accomplices were indicted on charges including fraud, falsifying business records and aggravated money laundering. Chen has been detained and is being held incommunicado while Lee remains at large.
The high-profile case is remeniscent of how opposition politicians had intentionally used vaccine procurement controversies to launch smear campaigns against the government, stirring public distrust in the pandemic for electoral gains.
People are sharing news clips from 2021 and 2022 in which Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) politicians, including then-KMT legislator Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安), and TPP founder and then-Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), accused the government of “blocking the BNT vaccine” by making it difficult for private entities to purchase vaccines, saying that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was “sacrificing lives” to profit from the domestic Medigen vaccine.
People shared clips of Minister Without Portfolio Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), then-minister of health and welfare and head of the then-Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), repeatedly explaining at the time that as countries were scrambling to secure vaccine supplies, it was almost impossible for vaccine makers to sell vaccines to non-government entities, warning against fradulent vaccine brokers.
When the government had secured supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the KMT began saying it was unsafe, sowing public fear and doubt and dissuading people from getting vaccinated, championing the BNT vaccine as a better and more reliable vaccine. When the government’s almost-finalized deal to purchase the BNT vaccine directly from Germany fell through due to Chinese political interference in 2021, private entities stepped in to help. The opposition repeatedly accused the government of blocking vaccine procurement, even asking the public if they “believe Tzu Chi or the DPP,” as they aggressively attacked development of the Medigen vaccine, saying that the DPP-led government was using the people as “lab rats” and engaging in stock speculation involving the vaccine.
Chen Shih-chung lost to Chiang in the Taipei mayoral election in November 2022, in which campaign sparring centered on pandemic responses and vaccine procurement controversies. The health ministry was still refuting such claims in late 2023, as the KMT’s and TPP’s candidates for the 2024 elections continued to accuse the DPP of “poor” pandemic policies that “killed people.”
After the WHO partnered with Medigen in a technology-sharing agreement in 2023 and CECC officials won defamation lawsuits against accusations of corruption in vaccine procurement, when the Tzu Chi scam case was revealed last week, some called it “delayed justice” for Chen Shih-chung, the CECC and the DPP-led government.
They urged Chiang, Ko and other KMT legislators who manipulated public fear and concerns during the pandemic into smear campaigns to claw their way toward more power, to apologize to the people.
People have questioned why Tzu Chi had apparently not reported the loss to the police for five years, remaining quiet through accusations that the government blocked vaccine acquisition, only saying last week that it just learned about the alleged scam from the news and would fully cooperate with the court. They asked how Tzu Chi could simply sweep a US$30 million loss under the rug with no explanation to its donors.
Tzu Chi had earnestly wanted to help secure vaccines for public. Opposition politicians, who intentionally politicize public health issues for electoral gains, and are doing so once again during this summer’s cooking oil scandal, are not so innocent.
In this digital age with overwhelming information noise, and especially in times of crisis, the public should consider the importance of honing their critical thinking and fact-checking skills, and of trusting rational reasoning by professionals — be it in disease prevention, food safety or other complicated issues — rather than exaggerated emotional claims by self-serving politicians.
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