Jan Šinágl angažovaný občan, nezávislý publicista

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked a federal judge on Nov. 15 to give it until the year 2076 to fully release the documents in its possession tied to the approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The FDA’s request was made in a filing as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by a medical transparency group. The government told the court it has 329,000 pages of documents responsive to the FOIA request and proposed releasing 500 pages per month to allow for redactions of exempt material. At that rate, the FDA would fully release the records in question in just under 55 years.

A former clinical trial overseer for a contractor holding trials of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is pressing forward with a lawsuit against Pfizer and her former company despite the U.S. government declining to side with her.

The suit was brought under the False Claims Act, which enables Americans to file suits on behalf of the government “against those who have defrauded the government,” according to the government. More than $5.6 billion has been obtained through suits under the act, as of fall 2021. Whole article>

By Mark Worth June 29, 2021 in Global Whistleblowers

The victimization of a long-serving public employee who reported evidence of corruption has solidified the Czech Republic’s reputation as one of Europe’s poorest-performing countries when it comes to whistleblower protection.

The employee was disciplined, recalled from an overseas post, threatened with dismissal, and subjected to psychological testing in retaliation for reporting suspicions of bribery. (The employee’s name and identifying information is being withheld.)

The employee, who has worked for the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs for more than 20 years, was disciplined under highly suspicious circumstances within days after reporting the alleged bribery. The reason involved a petty bureaucratic snafu and not actual wrongdoing by the employee, a review of the case by the European Center for Whistleblower Rights has found.

The employee was retaliated against in apparent violation of Czech Regulation 145/2015, which was enacted in June 2015 to comply with the OECD’s Anti-Bribery Convention. The regulation on “Whistleblowing in the Public Sector” states that “a civil servant who reports suspicion of unlawful conduct…shall not be, in relation to this activity, harmed, disadvantaged or otherwise oppressed.”

The European Center has directly alerted key members of Czech Parliament and Foreign Affairs Minister Jakub Kulhánek about the situation. A letter of protest was sent to Kulhánek this month by the European Center, based in Berlin, and the National Whistleblower Center, based in Washington, DC.