Federal prosecutors should investigate the president of a nonprofit that funneled U.S. taxpayer money to a laboratory in China, a U.S. House of Representatives panel said on May 1.
Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, should be probed after he and his group violated the terms of a U.S. grant, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic said.
Mr. Daszak, who holds a doctorate, may have violated federal laws including a statute that prohibits falsifying, concealing, or covering up “any trick, scheme, or device,” the subcommittee said in a report detailing the results of its investigation into Mr. Daszak, EcoHealth, the grant it received, and U.S. officials at the agency that gave the grant.
Mr. Daszak, for instance, claimed that the reason EcoHealth submitted an annual report two years late was because he was “locked out” by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) system. But a forensic audit of the system uncovered no evidence supporting that claim, according to the report.
“The select subcommittee does not find EcoHealth’s explanation for the delayed submission to be credible or consistent with testimony and documents produced during this investigation,” it stated.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), a doctor who is the chairman of the panel, said that Mr. Daszak “is not a good steward of U.S. taxpayer dollars and should never again receive funding from the U.S. taxpayer.”
Mr. Daszak should be debarred, or prevented from receiving additional U.S. taxpayer funds, and investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice for possible criminal violations, Dr. Wenstrup said.
An EcoHealth spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the group had not yet seen the subcommittee’s report.
The Department of Justice declined to comment.
The year five annual report from the grant showed that experiments were conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the same city where the first COVID-19 cases appeared, that caused an increase in one of the functions of a bat coronavirus, which experts say fits the common definition of gain-of-function research.
Mr. Daszak and EcoHealth “conducted dangerous gain-of-function research at the WIV, willfully violated the terms of a multi-million-dollar NIH grant, and placed U.S. national security at risk,” Dr. Wenstrup said. “This blatant contempt for the American people is reprehensible.”
