Eu­ro­pean Om­buds­man up­holds 'mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion' find­ing over miss­ing Pfiz­er CEO texts

The Eu­ro­pean Om­buds­man blast­ed the Com­mis­sion’s han­dling of re­quests for text mes­sages be­tween pres­i­dent Ur­su­la von der Leyen and Pfiz­er CEO Al­bert Bourla on Wednes­day, while of­fer­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for record­ing work-re­lat­ed texts.

The texts re­port­ed­ly led to Pfiz­er’s largest vac­cine deal, ac­cord­ing to a New York Times piece pub­lished last April — but up­on a pub­lic ac­cess re­quest made by a jour­nal­ist, the Com­mis­sion re­spond­ed that it had no record of them. Af­ter an in­quiry by Om­buds­man Emi­ly O’Reil­ly, the Com­mis­sion said last month that it still hadn’t lo­cat­ed the mes­sages, though O’Reil­ly point­ed out that it’s still un­clear whether the ad­min­is­tra­tion looked “di­rect­ly and cor­rect­ly” for the texts.

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