According to documents obtained by Open The Books, two Chinese vaccine manufacturers, Changchun BCHT and China National Biotec Group, were among the most frequent payers of royalties to Dr. Anthony Fauci's former agency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), during the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years.
The NIAID collected $690 million in royalty payments for the licensing of intellectual property created in taxpayer-funded federal labs during this period.
The NIAID did not provide a breakdown of how much third parties, including those based in China, paid to the agency. Changchun BCHT made the fifth most payments, while China National Biotec Group made the eleventh most. Other large pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Moderna, Merck & Co., and GSK also paid out royalties during this period.
China National Biotec Group is a subsidiary of Sinopharm, China's state-owned pharmaceutical giant. Open The Books founder Adam Andrzejewski expressed concerns about the ethical implications and conflicting interests involved in Chinese entities licensing medical innovations from the NIAID.
The Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have acknowledged the possibility that COVID-19 emerged from a Chinese lab.
Fauci served as the head of NIAID until the end of 2022. In the 2022 fiscal year, third parties paid $350 million to the NIAID, which is over ten times the amount the agency received in the past decade combined.
The NIAID has not yet responded to requests for comment.
