Donate
by ru en
Donate

We investigate corruption, uncover fake news and analyze the news agenda. The BIC is a member of the global network of investigative journalists.

Our journalists are the recipients of the national award “Free Word” from the Association of Journalists of Belarus in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. At "Free Word" 2021 BIC’s team also received first place for Analytics

BIC is a member of the OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project)

We are also members of GIJN (Global Investigative Journalism Network)

Antifake / Factcheck

23 лютага

The husband of European Commission President runs the Pfizer vaccine company. The WTF team checked whether it's true

In the EU, public attention was drawn to the head of the European Commission and her husband for a different reason at the end of 2022.

Authors:
Editors:
Fake appearance date: 13.11.2023
The husband of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen runs the company that produces the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. This fact allegedly leads to widespread use of the vaccine in Europe. This is what both TV presenter Grigory Azarenok and political scientist Piotr Petrovsky talked about on the air of the program “Azarenok. Napryamuyu". Weekly Top Fake journalists verified their claim.

Host Grigory Azarenok in his program “Azarenok. Directly” told on November 13 what reasons he has seen for the popularity of the Pfizer vaccine in Europe. 

“They had injected with this Pfizer [everywhere]. And then it turned out that the husband of our beloved Ursula is the head of a pharmaceutical company that lobbies for these Pfizers and produces it,” he said.

According to the guest of the program, political scientist Piotr Petrovsky, this was the reason why Russian and Chinese vaccines against COVID-19 were not registered in Europe for a long time. Here is what Petrovsky, in particular, said:

The CEO of the U.S. company Pfizer is Albert Bourla. Pfizer produces coronavirus vaccines in collaboration with BioNTech, led by Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Türeci. On the contrary, the husband of the European Commission head is Heiko von der Leyen, who is the scientific director of the US biotech company Orgenesis.

A COVID-19 vaccine called AutoVac is among the company's developments, but the vaccine is still in medical trials. Orgenesis was not found to be linked to Pfizer and BioNTech.

In the EU, public attention was drawn to the head of the European Commission and her husband for a different reason at the end of 2022. The company, that Heiko von der Leyen works for, has received grants from the EU for projects related to gene and cell therapy.

Representatives of the Green Party requested to check whether it created a conflict of interest. As a result of the review, no violations were found.