BERLIN. Accusations of waste against CDU politician Jens Spahn: At the beginning of the corona period, the then Federal Minister of Health arbitrarily increased the purchase price of masks by the federal government by 50 percent. This is evident from emails from the ministry, which are now being reported FAZ reported.
In doing so, he overruled the head of his specialist department, who described 3.00 euros plus VAT as an “appropriate” price in an internal message on March 24, 2020. Just one day later, Spahn decided to buy the masks for 4.50 euros net. The final price rose from 3.57 to 5.36 euros each. Spahn had already said during the Corona period: “We will have to forgive each other a lot.”
This is how Spahn justifies himself
Is this also a waste of taxpayers’ money? With 262 million masks purchased at this price, the taxpayer had to pay 469 million euros gross more than originally planned. The health budget is still missing the money today. Spahn now justifies himself by saying that a month later “the price determined in a price sample was 6.35 euros net and therefore considerably higher than the stated 4.50 euros.” He had this said by a spokesman.
The CDU politician then refused to pay 2.3 billion euros to the mask suppliers. The Cologne High Court recently ruled in favor of the companies. In the more than four years that the state has now owed the money to the mask suppliers According to information from JUNGE FREIHEIT, there will be an additional default interest of approximately one billion euros.
Lauterbach starts an investigation
Spahn’s successor, Karl Lauterbach (SPD), suspected in the week before the publication of the emails that Spahn was responsible for setting the high price. “The files are now also being secured, archived and evaluated.” He now wants to appoint a special representative.
Health politician Janosch Dahmen, one of the biggest hardliners in the Corona measures, sharply criticized the former Minister of Health: “This email will probably go down in history as the most expensive wasteful message in post-war history.” corner of health care.” (fh)