A Facebook post suggesting that pharmaceutical companies, global investment groups and billionaire philanthropists conspired to end the COVID-19 pandemic was shared online.
The report claims there are links between the organizations and invites readers to think it is a conspiracy. It ends with the sentence: “Now you understand how a dead bat sold in a wet market in China infected the ENTIRE PLANET” (here, here, here, here).
Many of the claims appear in December 2020 in similar posts unmasked by Reuters (here) and other fact checkers (here and here).
The claims can be divided into two themes, the first focusing on the origins of the pandemic in Wuhan and the second highlighting false ties between world organizations.
The Wuhan Laboratory
“The virus originated in the biological laboratory in Wuhan”
No evidence. Unverified theories have suggested that the virus that causes COVID-19 was synthesized by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (here). At the time of publication, however, the majority of virologists and infectious disease experts said that the new virus probably developed naturally. A more comprehensive Reuters report on the origins of COVID-19 can be read here.
“Winterthur built Chinese laboratory in Wuhan”
Untrue. Winterthur is a Swiss insurance company acquired in 2006 (here) by AXA, a French insurance company. It is not a construction company and there is nothing that can link it to the building of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was originally established in 1956 as a Chinese national institution (here).
“The Chinese biological laboratory in Wuhan is funded by Glaxosmithkline”
Untrue. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not funded by the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The institute is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) (here), which is run by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (here). In 2019, a CAS member wrote an open letter (here) in which he claimed that the academy’s funding was divided equally between the Chinese government and ‘competitive funding or technology transfer’. The institute’s partners are listed on its website (here).
“The biological laboratory in Wuhan was funded by Dr. Fauci”
Misleading. Anthony Fauci has been the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 (here). The NIAID is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health (here).
The NIH confirmed in an email to Reuters that it had granted $ 3.4 million to the nonprofit organization EcoHealth Alliance Inc. for more than six years to fund research to understand the rise of bat coronavirus. The nonprofit then donated the money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, along with East China Normal University (Shanghai), the Institute of Pathogen Biology (Beijing) and the Duke-NUS Medical School (Singapore).
U.S. government websites show that between 2015 and 2019, the Wuhan Institute received $ 814,608 (link here from “Prime Awards” to “Sub-Awards” in the top right corner). A spokesperson added that the award to EcoHealth Alliance ended on April 24, 2020 and was reinstated on July 8, 2020.
The Trump administration’s decision to reduce funding for EcoHealth Alliance was reported by Politico in April after receiving emails between EcoHealth Alliance and the NIH (here).
The NIH website shows that the reinstalled budget will last until June 2021 (here), but EcoHealth Alliance wrote in August that the NIH “imposed impossible and irrelevant conditions that would prevent us from continuing this critical work”.
It is not just the US government that is funding the Wuhan Institute: the European Union declared on 26 January 2021 that it has been awarding grants to the laboratory since 2015. He added that the institute: ‘produced the first SARS-Cov2 genome series, which enabled European Virus Archive partners to design the widely used diagnostic polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for COVID-19’ (here) .
Pharmaceutical companies, investment groups and philanthropists
Pfizer
“Glaxosmithkline owns Pfizer!”
Untrue. Although GSK has entered into joint ventures with Pfizer, the two are separate companies (here and here). In fact, Pfizer does not have a single owner, but is owned by members of the public and a variety of institutions, with the largest shareholder in the Vanguard Group (here)
“Bill Gates is a shareholder of Pfizer”
This is true at the time of publication. As outlined above, Pfizer has many shareholders. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has owned Pfizer shares since 2002 (here here) and a 2019 tax return from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust lists Pfizer among its corporate investments (see the Foundation Trust annual tax return for 2019) . The foundation also awarded research grants to the company (here).
BlackRock
“GlaxoSmithKline is managed by Black Rock Finance”
Misleading. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm, owned 7.5% of GSK (fintel.io/so/us/gsk/blackrock) at the time of publication and is their largest shareholder (here). This does not mean that GSK is “managed” by BlackRock, as GSK has 1553 institutional owners and shareholders (fintel.io/so/us/gsk).
“Black Rock is also a major shareholder in MICROSOFT, owned by Bill Gates”
Misleading. BlackRock is Microsoft’s second largest shareholder at the time of publication (here), but Microsoft is not owned by Bill Gates. In 2014, media reported that Gates as the largest individual shareholder of Microsoft had been blackmailed by the other former CEO, Steve Ballmer (here) of the company.
When Gates resigned from Microsoft’s board in 2020, news reports said he owned 1.3% of the company’s shares (here and here).
“Vanguard is a shareholder in Black Rock”
Where. Vanguard, another global investment firm, is the largest shareholder in BlackRock at the time of publication (here).
“Black Rock controls the central banks”
Untrue. The US Federal Reserve appointed BlackRock in March 2020 to manage commercial mortgage-backed securities in an effort to boost the economy (here). This means BlackRock helps the Federal Reserve, and does not control it.
George Soros and Winterthur
“Black Rock manages the finances of the Open Foundation Company (SorosFoundation)”
Untrue. Open Society Foundations is the world’s largest private financier of charities and non-governmental organizations (here) owned and funded by billionaire George Soros (here). The foundation has no connection to BlackRock.
However, Soros Fund Management is an investment fund managed by Soros that owned shares in BlackRock (here) but sold them in 2020 (here).
“The Soros Foundation serves the French AXA”
Untrue. There is no evidence of a link between Open Society Foundations and the French insurance company AXA (here). However, the financial research website Fintel recorded last year that Soros Fund Management owns more than 450,000 shares of AXA Equitable Holdings (here), a US company (here), partly owned by the French AXA (here).
“Soros owns the German company Winterthur”
Untrue. Winterthur is a Swiss insurer (here) that was bought by AXA in 2006 (here).
“Winterthur was built by the German Allianz”
Untrue. Winterthur and Allianz are both insurance companies, but the only link between them is the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance (ICHEIC), a non-profit organization founded in 1998 by US insurance regulators and representatives of Israel to provide outstanding Nazi life insurance policies. era.
The ICHEIC website states that negotiations have led to settlements with AXA of France and Winterthur of Switzerland (here) and on Allianz’s website it is said that the German industry has accepted responsibility for the involvement of German companies during the Nazi regime (here ). This connection may explain why Allianz, AXA and Winterthur are mentioned in this social media post.
“Vanguard is a shareholder in German Allianz”
Where. Vanguard is the second largest shareholder in Allianz (here).
VERDICT
Untrue. This report claims to be related to the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, pharmaceutical companies involved in COVID-19 vaccine research, global investment groups and billionaire philanthropists George Soros and Bill Gates. This implies that these connections, many of which are fabricated or misleading, are evidence that the pandemic was deliberately orchestrated. There is no evidence to support this, nor is it that the virus was created in a laboratory.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.