Healthcare Minister Venko Filipce admitted that he was behind the failed plan to purchase Chinese Sinopharm coronavirus vaccines using a shell company registered in American Samoa and Hong Kong. China backed out of the deal after it found the company that Filipce tried to use as unacceptable.
We used our Embassy in China in our talks, but unfortunately there were no results. Trying to speed up the procedure, we found an alternative way. It was absolutely not illegal, and no kickbacks were expected, Filipce said. He confirmed as authentic the reports in the Italian La Verita paper, which leaked two letters he sent to Sinopharm, asking that a shell company called Stabri is used in the deal.
The scandal is raising calls for an investigation into Filipce into likely abuse of office and an attempt to profit from the deal as Macedonia has only a few thousand donated Pfizer vaccines and an even smaller cache of Russian Sputnik V vaccines.
Filipce said that the initial plan to use the 3,000 Sputnik doses to inoculate people living on retirement homes is being abandoned because of the spiking number of patients which requires stretching the small supply to ensure more vaccination of medical staff.
Faced with the desperate situation, Minister Filipce is now promising a delivery of between 20,000 and 25,000 Astra Zeneca vaccines by the end of March. His recent promise of 200,000 Sinopharm vaccines by the end of February is apparently no longer valid.
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