Elizabeth Warren, other lawmakers seek details of Warp Speed co-chief Moncef Slaoui’s contract

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Wed, 2020-08-26 14:32 — mike kraft

Elizabeth Warren, others seek details of Warp Speed co-chief Moncef Slaoui’s contract Christopher Rowland Washington Post

Democrats on Capitol Hill have asked an Alexandria consulting company for details about an unusual contract that has allowed the chief scientific adviser to President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed to maintain personal investments and avoid making ethics disclosures of his holdings in pharmaceutical companies.

In a letter Monday to Advanced Decision Vectors, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and two other lawmakers are asking the firm to explain its role in providing drug company executive Moncef Slaoui’s services as the chief coronavirus vaccine adviser to the Trump administration for $1.

By designating Slaoui a private, outside contractor, the administration has allowed Slaoui to avoid disclosure of extensive drug company investments that he accumulated as a former top executive at GlaxoSmithKline and as a partner in a large venture capital fund, Medicxi. Consumer advocates, pharmaceutical pricing activists and congressional Democrats have called the arrangement an end run around ethics rules for government officials.

“It is not at all clear what ADV’s role is in this contract, nor is it clear how it is in the company’s interest to serve as the middleman in a scheme that appears to be designed solely to allow a high-level scientist involved in OWS to avoid addressing his serious financial conflicts of interest,'' wrote Warren, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).

The lawmakers ask for details about the terms of Slaoui’s contract with the administration, including compensation and benefits Slaoui is receiving and what the contract says about his possible financial conflicts of interest. They also ask whether ADV was directed to retain Slaoui at the behest of any government official.

The company says on its website that it was founded in 2009 and has experience working with the Defense and Transportation departments. In May, the company won a contract with the National Institutes of Health worth up to $1.5 million to provide consulting services in the agency’s efforts to find and mass produce coronavirus vaccine, according to a federal spending database, USAspending.gov. Trump appointed Slaoui to co-lead Operation Warp Speed on May 15. ...

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