Time.news – In December 2020, Heiko von der Leyen, German doctor and husband of the President of the European Commission, moved from a position of director of a clinic in Hanover (Germany) to that of medical director of Orgenesis Inc., a biotech based in the United States. This professional transition occurred a month into an extremely personal negotiation, through text messages, since deleted, between Ursula von der Leyen and Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer. Negotiation which would have lasted from August to November 2020, according to the revelations of the New York Times. Once the pharaonic contract was concluded between the Commission and Pfizer/BioNtech, Heiko crossed the Atlantic to join New York biotech, an obscure laboratory created in 2008, officially specializing in gene therapies, just like Pfizer.
On May 3, Orgenesis Inc. won, through its Dutch subsidiary, Mida Biotech BV, a grant of four million euros as part of the “European Innovation Council Pathfinder Challenge Program”, placed under the control of the European Commission. The loan granted to the subsidiary of Orgenesis corresponds to a research project on the induction of the production of autologous cells in association with artificial intelligence. The project involves an English biotech, DeepMed IO Ltd. and the University of Leiden (the Netherlands). Four million euros, in relation to the sums of money generated by the Ursula agreements and the large laboratories, that may seem very little, but it remains surprising that it is precisely a European subsidiary of the company whose Heiko is the medical director, who lands the grant. The deadline for submitting projects was from 1eMarch to May 4, but it seems that the small company did not have to wait for the closing to know its happiness. If the press release of Orgenesis dates from May 3, to inform, that of Mida Biotech BV dates him from April 7. Mechanism of “return“ as part of a corruption scheme, or simple conflict of interest?
The question arises all the more, since this is not the first subsidy awarded to a subsidiary of Orgenesis. Another case is no longer about four million, but 320 million euros. The Orgenesis srl case (Udine, Italy) was revealed by the journalist Mario Giordano, in his program “Fuori dal Coro” (Mediaset group).
Created on February 14, 2022, the Italian subsidiary was inactive until October 14, 2022, when it laid as its first stone the participation in a call for tenders in association with the University of Padua to obtain funds from the “National Recovery and Resilience Plan“(PNRR), stakeholder on the Italian side of the program”Next Generation“, created by the European Commission in March 2021. This program, sold as a sort of Marshall plan for the EU, sets out a whole series of objectives, unrelated to its primary mission, consisting of mitigating the economic and social disaster caused by sanitary measures. But this difficulty does not seem to arise for Orgenesis Italy, a subsidiary of the company, of which it should be recalled that Heiko von der Leyen is the medical director while being chairman of the Supervisory Committee for the allocation PNRR funds, i.e. funds allocated by the body headed by his wife.
Faced with the national scandal, on October 27, Heiko left his position on the supervisory committee of the Italian structure, but retained his title of director within the parent company in the United States. The funds received are not questioned.
This affair in Italy revives the never-dispelled scandal of text messages between Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, and Ursula von der Leyen. It calls into question the operation of collective and coercive purchase of vaccines by the Commission, and casts doubt on the discretionary use of funds within the framework of the program “Next Generation”.