Zaev Denies “La Verita” Claims of Processes for Procurement of Vaccines

Italian newspaper “La Verita” wrote on Wednesday that official Skopje negotiated with Sinopharm for procurement of COVID-19 vaccines through a fictive company established in Hong Kong, citing this as reason why official Beijing returned to the Macedonian government the money paid in advance for the vaccines. PM Zoran Zaev said that these writings were false news. “I responsibly claim that no illegal activities have been made in the process for acquiring vaccines from China. We were unable to directly contact Sinopharm as government which is why we tried to do so via private companies in order to prove our interest for procuring the vaccines, one of them being “POWERCHINA”, the company that is building several roads in our country. Ultimately, we decided to do this via the Chinese Embassy in Skopje, and now we expect the procurement of vaccines to be realised by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Zaev said.