Authorities in Germany have fallen victim to a multimillion-dollar fraud involving masks much needed in the COVID-19 pandemic, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state and one of the hardest hit, last month paid 14.7 million euros (US$15.95 million) for about 10 million masks only to discover they did not exist, prosecutors in Traunstein, Bavaria, said.
The German managing director of two distribution companies based in Zurich, Switzerland, and Hamburg, Germany, raised the alarm after realizing he had been tricked.
Photo: EPA-EFE
According to the man’s police report, he received an offer from companies allegedly based in Asia in the middle of last month to supply the masks and subsequently attracted the large order from North Rhine-Westphalia.
State authorities transferred 14.7 million euros to the company, which then made a 2.4 million euros down payment.
Bavarian investigators said that 52 vehicles had been lined up to pick up the coveted masks in the Netherlands and deliver them under police protection.
The distribution company has refunded 12.3 million euros to the state authorities.
However, it remains unclear whether the remaining 2.4 million euros, which has been frozen in foreign bank accounts, can be recovered.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday said that a lesson to be learned from the pandemic was that Europe needed to develop self-sufficiency in the production of critical medical equipment such as masks.
“Regardless of the fact that this market is presently installed in Asia ... we need a certain self-sufficiency, or at least a pillar of our own manufacturing” in Germany or elsewhere in the EU, the chancellor told reporters in Berlin.
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