Pandemic Grift: 35 Doctors, Scientists and Healthcare Moguls Who Became COVID Billionaires
by 21st Century Wire
December 27, 2021
It’s been two years since the ‘novel’ coronavirus first appeared on the global scene in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. Since then, a litter a of new billionaires have been born, all conveniently positioned to capitalise off of the world great-ever pseudo pandemic. Whether it’s cashing in on unprecedented vaccine sales made possible government mandates, new and expensive untested drug treatments, dubious medical devices, fraudulent PCR and lateral flow COVID-19 testing, masks, PPE, home delivery services, and various other forms of public-private grift, well-connected globalists have been quick to extract as much free public money as possible and then launder their takings on the stock market, and other ventures to supposedly ‘fight the global pandemic.’
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Of course, among the biggest winners globally in this corporativist coup d’etat are the transnational pharmaceutical drug cartels – gifted sweatheart contracts by governments, allowing cartel members to freely manufacture and distribute experimental gene-jab ‘vaccines’ which they claims protect people against COVID-19. Leading this pack in this sordid group of corporate actors are the perennially corrupt firm Pfizer, along with its German biotech partner in crime, BioNTech, along with Massachusetts-based Moderna — all of whom are pushing an experimental mRNA gene therapy injection deceptively marketed as a ‘vaccine.’
Cashing in on COVID
Because of massive guaranteed government purchases of their half-baked, unproven products, executives at these well-connected firms have seen their net worths skyrocket since January 2020.
Leading in this pseudo pandemic jackpot sweepstakes are BioNTech CEO Uğur Şahin who is now worth a cool $4.2 billion, and Moderna’s Stéphane Bancel who has managed to parlay a $4.1 billion fortune on the back of the COVID crisis. Thanks to public subsidies and funding from the US taxpayers to develop their experimental mRNA genetic injection, vaccine barons at Moderna have also produced other billionaires, including Harvard professor Timothy Springer and MIT scientist Robert Langer.
Naturally, these experimental mandated GMO gene-jab ‘vaccines’ will require billions of glass vials to transport their toxic payload, and so enter Italy’s Sergio Stevanato, another new COVID billionaire and the majority shareholder in the privately-owned Stevanato Group, which is making vaccine vials for the transnational corporate drug cartel.
Other industries cashing in on the PCR-driven ‘case-demic’ are those making antibody treatments and other drugs which they claim will “fight the virus”and have benefited from mass-hysteria we’ve seen since February 2020. Clever operators like Carl Hansen, the CEO of Canadian biotech firm AbCellera, suddenly became worth $2.9 billion after his company went public in December 2020, after a questionable fast-track approval by the Food and Drug Administration’s for its alleged ‘safe and effective’ antibody treatment developed with Big Pharma cartel member Eli Lilly.
The other big grift is the testing of the rushed experimental ‘vaccines’, drugs and medical devices. Among those topping the list is the world of spotty clinic tests and product trials is one August Troendle, the founder and CEO of Cincinnati-based research firm Medpace, who is suddenly became worth a tidy $1.3 billion after his shares jumped a whopping 70% since 2020.
Here are the 10 of the most noteworthy opportunists who have managed to leverage what has been largely a contrived crisis from the beginning – using the fear and chaos to become rich beyond their wildest dreams. The list is based on calculations made by Forbes for the year 2020:
Uğur Şahin
Net worth: $4.2 billion
Citizenship: Germany
Source of wealth: BioNTech
The Turkish-born physician cofounded BioNTech in the German city of Mainz in 2008 with his wife, Özlem Türeci, who serves as the firm’s Chief Medical Officer. He owns about 17% of the company’s shares. BioNTech’s stock has risen 160% since January on the back of its successful Covid-19 vaccine developed in partnership with Pfizer, which was declared by the U.S. FDA to be 95% effective in preventing Covid-19. The first doses were rolled out in the U.K. on December 8th and in the U.S. on December 14th, with more doses reserved for the European Union, Japan and Canada, among others. Before starting BioNTech, Şahin and Türeci founded biopharma company Ganymed Pharmaceuticals in 2001, which they sold to Japan-based Astellas Pharma for about $460 million in 2016.
Stéphane Bancel
Net worth: $4.1 billion
Citizenship: France
Source of wealth: Moderna
Bancel, a French citizen, became CEO of Massachusetts-based Moderna in 2011 after leaving his previous job as CEO of French diagnostics firm BioMérieux. He owns about 6% of Moderna, down from about 9% when he first became a billionaire in March, after selling more than a million shares as the firm’s stock surged by more than 550% since the beginning of the year. On December 18, Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine – with a reported efficacy of 95% — was the second to be approved by regulators in the U.S. after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The first doses will be administered in the U.S., which ordered 200 million doses with an option for 300 million more.
Yuan Liping
Net worth: $4.1 billion
Citizenship: Canada
Source of wealth: Pharmaceuticals
Yuan owns 24% of one of China’s leading vaccine producers, Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products, after her divorce from the company’s chairman (and fellow billionaire) Du Weimin in June. The split instantly made the Shenzhen resident Canada’s richest woman. Kangtai’s stock is up 90% since the beginning of 2020. She worked at the company from 2012 to 2015 as a manager and director and has been a director at a Kangtai subsidiary, Beijing Minhai Biotechnology, since March 2017. Kangtai is the exclusive Chinese manufacturer for the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, with a deal to produce 200 million doses, but the company has a checkered history: in 2013, its hepatitis B vaccine was linked to the death of 17 infants, but a government investigation went nowhere and critics were reportedly pressured to retract negative articles. A representative for Shenzhen Kangtai did not reply to a request for comment.
Hu Kun
Net worth: $3.9 billion
Citizenship: China
Source of wealth: Medical equipment
Hu is the chairman of Contec Medical Systems, a manufacturer of medical devices based in the northeastern Chinese port city of Qinhuangdao. He took the company public on the Shenzhen stock exchange in August and owns nearly half of the shares, which are up nearly 150% since the IPO. Contec draws more than 70% of its revenue from overseas and makes a range of medical products for hospitals including nebulizers, stethoscopes and blood pressure monitors.
Carl Hansen
Net worth: $2.9 billion
Citizenship: Canada
Source of wealth: AbCellera
Hansen is the CEO and cofounder of Vancouver-based AbCellera, a biotech firm that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify the most promising antibody treatments for diseases. He founded the company in 2012. Until 2019 he also worked as a professor at the University of British Columbia, but shifted to focus full-time on AbCellera. That decision seems to have paid off, and Hansen’s 23% stake earned him a spot in the billionaire club after AbCellera’s successful listing on the Nasdaq on December 11. The U.S. government has ordered 300,000 doses of bamlanivimab, an antibody AbCellera discovered in partnership with Eli Lilly that received FDA approval as a Covid-19 treatment in November.
Timothy Springer
Net worth: $2 billion
Citizenship: United States
Source of wealth: Moderna
An immunologist and professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard University, Springer was a founding investor in Moderna in 2010 when he put about $5 million into the fledgling company. A decade later, his 3.5% stake is now worth roughly $1.6 billion. Springer is an active investor in biotech, with smaller holdings in publicly traded firms Scholar Rock and Morphic Therapeutic, which grew out of his research with postdoctoral students from his lab at Harvard. He earned his first big payday in 1999 when he sold LeukoSite, a biotech outfit he founded in 1993 and took public five years later, to Millennium Therapeutics for $635 million.
Sergio Stevanato
Net worth: $1.8 billion
Citizenship: Italy
Source of wealth: Medical packaging
Stevanato is president of Italian medical packaging firm Stevanato Group, the world’s second-largest producer of glass vials and a prominent supplier of vials for more than forty Covid-19 vaccines. Founded on the outskirts of Venice in 1949 by Sergio’s father, Giovanni, the company is now run by Sergio’s children, Franco and Marco, who serve as CEO and vice president, respectively. The $700 million (sales) company is also the world’s largest producer of insulin pens and makes machines that craft, sterilize and package billions of vials, syringes and other glass products. In June, Stevanato signed an agreement with the Gates Foundation-backed Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations to provide 100 million vials for nine different Covid-19 vaccines — since then, the firm has penned additional deals with several more vaccine manufacturers which it cannot publicly disclose.
Robert Langer
Net worth: $1.5 billion
Citizenship: United States
Source of wealth: Moderna
Known as the “Edison of Medicine” for his pioneering work in the field of biomedical engineering, Langer is a professor of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a founding investor in Moderna — located just across the street from his office in Cambridge — in 2010 and has never sold a share; his 3% stake is now worth about $1.5 billion. He owns smaller holdings in publicly traded biotech startups SQZ Biotechnologies and Frequency Therapeutics, both founded by postdoctoral students from his lab, and he holds more than 1,400 patents which have been licensed more than 400 times to pharmaceutical and medical companies.
Premchand Godha
Net worth: $1.4 billion
Citizenship: India
Source of wealth: Pharmaceuticals
Godha started out as a chartered accountant before entering the pharmaceutical sector in 1975, when he acquired Mumbai-based drugmaker Ipca Labs in partnership with the family of Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan. The firm, which manufactures generics and pharmaceutical ingredients, saw its stock price nearly double this year partly due to higher production and sales of the controversial antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which was touted as a potential cure early in the pandemic before its use was discouraged by the World Health Organization for having little to no effect in reducing mortality from Covid-19.
August Troendle
Net worth: $1.3 billion
Citizenship: United States
Source of wealth: Pharmaceutical services
Troendle is the CEO and founder of Cincinnati-based Medpace, which carries out contract work and clinical trials for pharmaceutical firms developing drugs and medical devices. Before founding Medpace in 1992 and taking it public in 2016, the University of Maryland-trained doctor worked on clinical development at Swiss pharma giant Novartis and as a medical review officer at the FDA. Medpace’s labs handle the gamut of pharmaceutical services, from running swab and antibody tests for Covid-19 for external clinics to running complex clinical trials for drugmakers working on new vaccines and treatments. Forbes estimates that Troendle, who owns about 21% of Medpace shares, is now worth about $1.3 billion, making him the latest healthcare entrepreneur to join the billionaire club in 2020.
Juan López-Belmonte López & family
Net worth: $1.8 billion
Source of wealth: Pharmaceuticals
Citizenship: Spain
López-Belmonte López chairs Spanish pharma company Rovi, which inked a contract with Moderna in July to fill and package hundreds of millions of doses of its Covid-19 vaccine at Rovi’s factory in Madrid, Spain.
John Oyler
Net worth: $1.8 billion
Source of wealth: BioTech
Citizenship: USA
Oyler is the CEO and cofounder of Beijing-based drugmaker BeiGene, which signed an agreement with biotech outfit Singlomics Pharmaceuticals in August to develop, manufacture and sell Singlomics’ antibody treatment for Covid-19.
Other Billionaire Beneficiaries:
Li Juanquan & family
Net worth: $7.9 billion
Citizenship: Hong Kong
Source of wealth: Surgical products
Jian Jun
Net worth: $4.4 billion
Citizenship: China
Source of wealth: Biotech
Ye Xiaoping
Net worth: $4.2 billion
Citizenship: China
Source of wealth: Pharmaceuticals
Hao Hong
Net worth: $3.4 billion
Citizenship: United States
Source of wealth: Pharmaceuticals
Jin Lei
Net worth: $3.2 billion
Citizenship: China
Source of wealth: Pharmaceuticals
Liu Fangyi
Net worth: $3.2 billion
Citizenship: China
Source of wealth: Medical equipment
Lv Jianming
Net worth: $3.1 billion
Citizenship: Hong Kong
Source of wealth: Medical equipment
Chen Xiao Ying
Net worth: $2.7 billion
Citizenship: Hong Kong
Source of wealth: Health information
Miao Yongjun
Net worth: $2.5 billion
Citizenship: China
Source of wealth: Clinical diagnostics
Lin Zhixiong & family
Net worth: $2.1 billion
Citizenship: China
Source of wealth: Medical devices
Alberto Siccardi & family
Net worth: $2.1 billion
Citizenship: Switzerland
Source of wealth: Medical devices
Noubar Afeyan
Net worth: $1.9 billion
Source of wealth: BioTech
Citizenship: USA
Li Wenmei & family
Net worth: $1.7 billion
Citizenship: China
Source of wealth: Medical equipment
Lin Jie & family
Net worth: $1.7 billion
Citizenship: China
Source of wealth: Pharmaceuticals
Liu Xiucai & family
Net worth: $1.6 billion
Citizenship: United States
Source of wealth: Chemicals
Pu Zhongjie & family
Net worth: $1.6 billion
Citizenship: China
Source of wealth: Medical equipment
Rao Wei & family
Net worth: $1.6 billion
Citizenship: China
Source of wealth: Pharmaceuticals
Felix Baker
Net worth: $1.4 billion
Citizenship: United States
Source of wealth: Biotech investing
Julian Baker
Net worth: $1.4 billion
Citizenship: United States
Source of wealth: Biotech investing
Rajendra Agarwal
Net worth: $1.3 billion
Citizenship: India
Source of wealth: Pharmaceuticals
Banwarilal Bawri
Net worth: $1.3 billion
Citizenship: India
Source of wealth: Pharmaceuticals
Girdharilal Bawri
Net worth: $1.3 billion
Citizenship: India
Source of wealth: Pharmaceuticals
Benedicte Find
Net worth: $1.3 billion
Citizenship: Denmark
Source of wealth: Medical devices
Alan Miller & family
Net worth: $1.3 billion
Citizenship: United States
Source of wealth: Healthcare services
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