On Friday, a Brazilian congressman was seen wearing a bulletproof vest for safety while arriving at a Senate commission inquiry. The congressman has been denounced for an alleged misconduct in a COVID-19 vaccine contract of 1.6 billion reais ($323 million) signed by the Brazilian government.
The Health Ministry’s whistleblower, Congressman Luis Miranda along with his brother Ricardo Miranda who raised doubts about the COVID-19 vaccine deal with India’s multinational biotechnology company Bharat Biotech are recognized as the prime witnesses in a hearing underway on Friday.
The country’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro informed on Friday that no irregularities existed in the deal for the shot of Indian drugmaker’s Covaxin.
“There is nothing wrong with the Covaxin contract, there is no overpricing”, the president stated in a news conference in the interior of Sãu Paulo.
According to Miranda and his lawmaker brother, they had a meeting with the President in the month of March and had warned him of the suspicious contract but nothing was put forward to investigate the agreement.
As reported by the AP, the representative of Bharat Biotech said, the deal was signed in February and had committed the Ministry to pay $320 million at a cost of $15 per dose of vaccine to Precisa Medicamentos. The attention of prosecutors was drawn due to the cost of per dose, which was visibly higher than other COVID-19 vaccines including Pfizer.
Bolsonaro, who was elected on an anti-graft platform called himself “incorruptible” and told that his opponents were trying to tarnish his government’s reputation with baseless accusations of corruption.
