Democratic Labour Party (DLP) President Verla De Peiza has dismissed as lacklustre Acting Prime Minister Santia Bradshaw’s defence of the failed deal to purchase COVID-19 vaccines, the subject of a claim of a scam in an American lawsuit.
She called for the full details of the deal to be revealed and explained clearly to the Barbadian public.
The scandal involves a fledgling St Lucia-based Barbadian firm Radical Investment Limited (RIL), owned by construction magnate Mark Maloney, which alleges it’s been swindled out of millions of dollars it paid for ultimately non-existent doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine on behalf of the Barbados Government, through the American-based company, Good Vibrations.
DePeiza called journalists to DLP headquarters on Thursday to respond to Bradshaw’s remarks made a day earlier, when she stated no taxpayers’ dollars were spent on the transaction and that the agreement was reached with Radical at the height of the “vaccine race”.
The lawyer-politician said: “It is not enough to just say that so far we have not paid out any money, nor do I as an attorney, knowing the relationship between an agent and a principal, am I comforted by simply hearing that the loss is not ours, but it is the agent’s because that really depends on the agreement between the agent and the principal.
“We need to know what percentage of any commission was to be paid to the consortium here… because looking at the documents filed in the American court, we are seeing a price tag of $US10 a dose, when we know that Oxford AstraZeneca has made it very clear that they were dealing directly with Governments, or through High Commissions, and their price was US$3 a dose. So we need to have some clarity given to the money aspect of it, to the legal aspect of it, and we really need to understand why it is the Government would go to brand new companies.”
DePeiza also scoffed at the notion that any form of due diligence was done over the two companies in question, Radical Investment Limited and Good Vibrations. For her, not only should have red flags been raised around the unseen track records of any form of medical expertise within both companies, but in the case of Good Vibrations, it was chartered in the American market as an entertainment brand, and not a medical firm.
She said: “Why were the hints not picked up, since the Acting Prime Minister insisted that there was due diligence, why was it that the name of the company if nothing else, it is obviously an entertainment company by its own name, why is it no due diligence was done behind a company that by its own name and objective is for entertainment purposes, why would that be the chosen company with which to deal in order to procure vaccines for Barbados?”
The DLP president insisted that any explanation for the process which sought to portray Maloney as having intricate contacts within the medical space that the Government itself did not have access to, does not hold water since it is now clear that any such contacts surrounding vaccine procurement simply did not exist.
DePeiza told journalists: “It is pretty clear now that who was fronting for the Government of Barbados, had no access, and had no contacts, so that just blows that argument out of the water. As we stated in the press conference, Barbados is already a part of a grouping that can do bulk buy, it is called CARICOM, we do not have to recreate a space.
“Outside of that, the access to the vaccine, AstraZeneca, never mind the others, AstraZeneca made their position clear. We are dealing directly with governments, approach us through your High Commission. They made that abundantly clear, and also they were selling at cost, there was no profit margin for that.
“So to introduce a middle man and to introduce cost, especially significant cost which could buy another million doses let’s be real about it… we already had established channels for access, and we definitely already had contacts.” (SB)
