PANDEMIC OF OPACITY
Mexico has signed 7 contracts to acquire COVID-19 vaccines and has received donations of doses from the United States government. Between contracts and donations, Mexico has secured 261 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, of which through March 9, 2022, it had received 225,615,255. Although we requested copies of the contracts through requests for access to information, and even though the Federal Institute for Access to Public Information and Data Protection (Spanish acronym INAI) has ordered the government to publish the documents, public versions of only 5 contracts have been published, with the prices of doses and clauses releasing the companies from liability redacted. Because the companies asked the Mexican government to redact this information and the government acquiesced, we have no way of knowing how much public money was paid to each vaccine maker.
JABS AND CONTRACTS
All contracts for acquisition of vaccines were awarded directly. Mexico secured 243,899,950 doses in contracts with companies and with Gavi Alliance through the COVAX mechanism. Also, Mexico received 17,008,800 vaccine doses in donations from the United States government.
MASSIVE PROFITS, NO INFORMATION
We can ascertain how many doses the contracts were for, but we know only that Mexico paid AstraZeneca 309 million dollars for 77.4 million doses and agreed to pay Gavi Alliance a 159,876,920 USD advance for 51,100,100 doses. The public version of the contract with Pfizer signed November 30, 2020, is for 34.4 million doses; however, the contract has been extended and renegotiated without the government publishing the relevant information; we know only that Mexico has received 51,433,395 doses of this vaccine to date. Mexico has also contracted for 35 million doses of the Ad5-nCov vaccine from Cansino Biologics, 20 million doses of Sinovac, 24 million doses of Sputnik V from the Gamaleya Institute, and 2 million of the Covishield vaccine from the Serum Institute of India. Also, Mexico has received 1,350,000 doses the Janssen vaccine, 6,272,000 of the Moderna vaccine, and 9,386,800 additional doses of AstraZeneca in donations.
CORRUPTION AND IMMUNITY
The companies benefited with vaccine contracts asked that information on the contracts be withheld.. In Mexico, this violates Articles 70.XXVII and 70.XXVIII of the General Law on Transparency and Access to Information and as a result the government has been violating the right to information established in Article 6 of the Constitution. This is a common mechanism of corporate capture that companies have used to continue negotiating the price of doses and terms of contracting with the highest bidders, which has in turn caused the phenomenon of stockpiling vaccines in the richest countries. Such conduct is not unique to the Mexican government. In countries with weak institutions permeable to corporate capture, companies leverage their power to impose their terms. In response to corporate pressure 13 countries in Latin America amended their laws to purchase vaccine between September and February 2021. It is of crucial importance to gain access to information on contracts and public and private funding for vaccine development and acquisition because concealing such information raises the risk of conflicts of interest and corruption.
COVID BENEFIT$
The companies that produce COVID-19 vaccines do not publish information on their beneficial owners. Through several public and private databases, PODER has obtained information on the leading shareholders, owners, and controllers of the companies that have contracts for vaccines with Mexico. In the case of Gavi Alliance, we have published information on its donors. Norges Bank Investment Management, The Vanguard Group, and BlackRock Inc. are the leading shareholders in 5 of the makers of vaccines used in Mexico. The Russian Federation is the leading investor, through the Russian Direct Investment Fund, in the Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which produces the Sputnik V vaccine. Capital Research and Management Company and its owners, managers, and founders Xuefeng Yu, Huihua Mao, Dongxu Qiu, and Tao Zhu are the beneficial owners of Cansino. Saif Partners IV, Yin Weidong, Prime Success, L.P., and Vivo Capital, LLC are the beneficiaries of Sinovac. Cyrus Poonawalla is the founder, director, and beneficial owner of the Serum Institute of India.
