“Yes, I would do it again,” says the man with the dripping umbrella. “We have no other way than fighting these people.”

Frédéric Baldan drove three hours through the pouring rain from Liège to Amsterdam. Now he is sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Krasnapolsky, handing me his hot-off-the-press book ‘The Global Covid Cartel’, in which he exposes the greed of Brussels lobbyists and power games at the top of the EU.

Baldan, a former lobbyist, has accused EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen of corruption, illegal taking of interests, destruction of public documents, and usurpation of titles and functions.

The case, known as ‘Pfitzergate’, is spectacular in every respect. At its centre is the most powerful civil servant in Europe. It concerns the biggest deal ever concluded on behalf of the EU Commission. And the most secret in the history of the Union.

At the height of the Covid crisis, Ursula von der Leyen concluded a vaccine deal worth 35 billion euros with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. Without witnesses. Without evidence. The text messages on her phone she sent to Bourla are destroyed.

But Ms. von der Leyen seems to be protected by Teflon. While she continues to govern unchallenged, Baldan has paid a high price. He lost his job, his licence as a lobbyist. And a few days ago, his bank accounts were frozen.

So far, Baldan has been rebuffed in court. But that is no reason for the Belgian to give up. On the contrary. This case is not just about the EU taxpayers' right to transparency, says Baldan. Western democracy is at stake. “It is at the hands of globalist agendas who seek to destroy it”.

Frédéric Baldan.

Weltwoche: In April 2021 Ursula von der Leyen, the most powerful politician in Europe, strikes the biggest deal the European commission has ever done. She buys 4,6 billion doses of vaccines for 23 billion Euros. Mr. Baldan, why this quantity. Who set the price?

Frédéric Baldan: There is no related documents. It's fully on an arbitrary basis. The amounts are crazy.10 shots per person, including old people, children in the whole of the EU. It's just insane. It was fully to the benefits of Pfizer.

Weltwoche: What is remarkable is that Ms. von der Leyen went solo on the deal.

Baldan: She has many ways to deal with third parties. She can send an email, for example. She can ask someone to organize a meeting with recordings of the minutes. But she decided to use her telephone. But instead, she established a secret process. She unlawfully negotiated using her phone. And then she destroyed the text messages.

Weltwoche: The European Court of Auditors did a special report on COVID-19 vaccines. They wrote, "This was the only contract where the joint negotiation team was not involved in this phase of negotiations, contrary to the Commission's decision on the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines." This rises the obvious question: What did she try to hide? But before we go deeper into your case, let’s take a look at her career. It was not the first time that she made dubious contracts and then destroyed evidence. One of her scandals was in 2018/19 as German defense minister. She awarded contracts to external consultancy firms worth tens of millions by the German defense ministry. Do you see a pattern with her doing such deals?

Baldan: It's a criminal modus operandi. Basically, she negotiated the same kind of ridiculous contract. If you see the figures, it's very difficult to believe that the contract is real and the service is really provided and needed by the government. It really looks just like offering public money to private companies and lobbies. This is basically the goal. It's against the common interest of the people and fully to the benefits of these private companies. This is not the role of a civil servant to do so. This is what leads us to the fact that she took an illegal interest in this case.

Weltwoche: Germany's Federal Audit Office was looking into how contracts were awarded. During the investigation, two of von der Leyen's phones were confiscated, but data from both phones have been deleted before being returned, arguing that the deletion was "for security reasons". German parliamentarians accused the defense ministry of torpedoing the investigation. But nothing ever happened to Ms. von der Leyen. She was left off the hook.

Baldan: It’s interesting to understand what Ms. von der Leyen did in-between the scandal of Germany and the one of Brussels. She decided to create an apartment in the building of the Commission. When I questioned the Commission: "Did you ask permission to the City of Brussels to create a new housing in the building because you are supposed to do so?", the answer was: "No, it's just like a room to take rest." But the register address of von der Leyen is in the building.

Weltwoche: Why would she establish a private place in the Ministry building?

Baldan: Because she had this scandal in Germany. She probably planned to create additional scandal in the same way using the same methods. If the police want to do a search at home of the president of the Commission, the police have no jurisdiction to do so, because her home is in the European Commission. If they want to have a right to enter the building, they need to ask permission from whom? From Ms. von der Leyen.

Weltwoche: In April 2023, you filed your lawsuit against Ms. von der Leyen before a Liège court. Shortly after, your lobbyist accreditation was withdrawn by a head of unit of the Commission which is a subordinate of Ursula von der Leyen. It was only first of many obstacles that would follow to sabotage your case.

Baldan: In Belgium, we started the biggest criminal case of the European Union in the history. We were 1000 plaintiffs, including member states, political parties, flight attendants, pilots, crews. We had law professors. We had the parents who lost their children. Even though it is major criminal case we had a lot of interference to prevent us from accessing the truth.

Weltwoche: Can you please explain.

Baldan: In the frame of this investigation, we received a document from a special unit from the Federal Police of Belgium fighting corruption. It's called the Office Central pour la Répression de la Corruption (OCRC). This unit wrote a report of 1000 pages. According to this report the destruction of public documents is fully proven.

Weltwoche: This report was also presented to the European Public Prosecutor Office (EPPO). It is the EU body responsible for investigating and prosecuting financial crimes. And it had opened an own investigation into the case.

Baldan: If you are destroying the evidence in the middle of a criminal investigation, it's also criminal offense. Even though the EPPO also knew this report their chief prosecutor went before the European parliament for a hearing. She declared, "I have no suspect in this case." It led us to question about who this chief prosecutor is?

Weltwoche: It is Laura Kövesi, the former chief prosecutor of Romania's National Anticorruption Directorate.

Baldan: She kicked out my national prosecutor from my case. We were there with no public ministry. It's unbelievable. During a hearing, even the investigating judge made a no-show just to protest because it was more a parody of justice. We discovered that this chief of EPPO is ultimately under the control of Ms. von der Leyen herself. The budget to prosecute comes from the Commission- The IT infrastructure, the one they use to transfer the secret file of the judge, is also under the control of the Commission. Ms. von der Leyen has a right to oblige this chief prosecutor to resign. It's just ridiculous.

Weltwoche: In other words; The very body that should investigate possible wrongdoings of the Commission president is acting upon Ms. von der Leyen’s own orders?

Baldan: Yes. In my view, it's obvious. Bear in mind that this lady, Laura Kövesi, had the same kind of problems in Romania, before becoming the EU chief prosecutor. She was under judicial control because she was accused of corruption, lying to the public authorities, and abuse of power. In our case, it's not possible to prove that Ms. Kövesi is corrupted, but we can prove the abuse of power, and we can prove that she lied to the European Parliament when she told to the parliament, "I have no suspect in this case." It's interesting to see that finally these people having this kind of bad behavior time and again, they are two similar ladies.

Weltwoche: Back to Ms. von der Leyen. Why would she work into the hands of companies like Pfitzer? It is hard to believe that it was a selfless act. What was her kickback? Is there evidence?

Baldan: I would draw your attention on two elements. The first one, which is very interesting for me as a consultant in competitive intelligence, is the tax report of the Gates Foundation. If you look at these documents, you will finally discover that this charity, the foundation, almost has all its investing partners and financial partners in the Cayman Islands. Why would a charity, that doesn't have to pay taxes in the US because they are fully deducted by the government, deal with the Cayman Islands if it's not to prevent the public of having some access to the information? Maybe this is one possibility to find evidence. The second one, is that the husband of von der Leyen.

Weltwoche: Heiko von der Leyen, who is a German physician.

Baldan: I discovered that the research he made when he was in the US were probably paid by the Wellcome Trust.

Weltwoche: Is this proven?

Baldan: If you look at who gave funds on that topic to the university at that time, around 30 years ago, it was the Wellcome Trust. I think it could be proven very easily. After that, Heiko von der Leyen decided to do some lobbying. Since December 2020, he is Medical Director of the company Orgenesis, which specializes in cell and gene therapies. We discovered that he had an inactive company in Italy that received some huge subsidies from the European Commission in the frame of the pandemic, which is also a supplier for the mRNA vaccines because they were experts in manufacturing gene therapies. There's also something to investigate there.

Weltwoche: Pfitzergate goes beyond Ursula von der Leyen and her ministry. Behind all this is “The Global COVID Cartel”. Your make the point that “western democracy is at the hands of globalist agendas who seek to destroy it”. This is a damning statement. Can you explain how they are doing it?

Baldan: What they try to do, first of all, is to allow the lobbies and multinationals to finally merge with the government or the public authority. It's the definition of fascism. In Davos, they call it the PPP, the private-public partnership. Basically, what they want to do is to oblige you to convert your fundamental rights to a system of privilege. This is the end of democracy. We can see it with transparency. As an example, Ms. von der Leyen, she tried to put in place the chat control because she wants to read your text messages.

Weltwoche: “Those in power want to know everything, while you know nothing about them”, as you say.

Baldan: Yes. This is amazing. You have a right to transparency, but in this case, they illegally censored the contract with Pfizer, and she destroyed the public documents, like the text messages, so that you are unable to read them. It's finally the transformation of your rights because it's your fundamental right to get these documents. Ms. von der Leyen is the public servant who is obliged to provide it to you because she must comply with the fundamental rights. The more ridiculous thing is that the role of the member of the European Commission is to enforce and oblige the people to respect the treaties. The Charter of Fundamental Rights is part of the treaties. Fact is, that we have violations committed by the very person who enforces it upon us. It's just terrible situation.

Weltwoche: Back to this global COVID cartel. It sounds mysterious. Who is in this cartel?

Baldan: I did an investigating job as a professional lobbyist, before I was suspended and then removed. I assessed, for example, all the awards that were given to Ms. von der Leyen. Who paid for the awards? Who paid, for example, the magazines to put von Ms. der Leyen on the cover saying that she's wonderful?

Weltwoche: Who was it?

Baldan: I identified some major lobbies in the crisis. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one. We have the Wellcome Trust. We also have the World Economic Forum. Ms. von der Leyen was a lobbyist from the World Economic Forum. Can you imagine? It's very shocking. It's fully incompatible with the treaties of the European Union because she's supposed to be independent from third parties.

Weltwoche: Was she a WEF lobbyist when she became President or the European Commission?

Baldan: Ms. von der Leyen has a big problem with her ego. If you double-check the archive of the World Economic Forum website, you will discover that after she was appointed as president of the European Commission, on the website the title of Ms. von der Leyen was replaced by "Her Excellency." It means that when she was in the capacity of president of the European Commission, she was at the same time still a member of the World Economic Forum. Today, it's unavailable on the web, except if you can use the archives and find it.

We have a huge conflict of interest there. We see always the same things. It was the same in Germany. She had a position at the WEF, and she gave benefits to members of the WEF using the public money. This is insane. We also discovered during this investigation that there are some links with the Rockefeller Foundation. They created lobbying platforms all together.

You just have to look at who supported, who created this lobbying platform. You will discover always the same guys. You will see the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation. You will identify always the same stakeholders. I decided to investigate the financial reports of all the lobbies. I did it with Global Citizen. I discovered that they have never received the billions they were supposed to receive. Everything was stated by Ms. von der Leyen. She said, “oh, we are going to give this money to Global Citizen”, but it's not true.

Finally, the only places where I found the billions is in the trust of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. It's amazing to see that, thanks to this crisis, we have Pfizer that made tens of billions of euros of profits with this operation and also the so-called “charities”.

Weltwoche: You claim that your book highlights elements that the judicial police were unable to identify. And you name a major lobbying firm who was commissioned by Pfizer to misrepresent the science. What do you mean by "misrepresent the science"?

Baldan: Like the word "pandemic." It's supposed to be related to a high level of mortality. What the lobby did in the past, during the H1N1 crisis, was to change the definition of this word. This way, in your mind, “pandemic” is still terrible, because you imagine that behind it, there is a high level of mortality. It's not the case anymore. It's like an infectious disease that spread and is out of control.

Weltwoche: Who is the “mayor lobbying firm” behind this?

Baldan: Hill & Knowlton. Let’s look at the track record of this American company. Do you remember the daughter of a former ambassador of Kuwait in Washington, DC, just before the Gulf war? She lied to the US authority during a hearing saying that Iraqi soldiers came to Kuwait and killed the babies in a hospital. It was a totally fake story. Hill & Knowlton was basically paid by the Pentagon to sell a war and this is why trained this lady to lie to the public.

Weltwoche: What did Hill & Knowlton do with Pfitzer.

Baldan: They admitted on their website that they used some methods, like storytelling, to make the public believe that everything was science. They told you that, “oh, this vaccine is a miracle”. Such a statement is related to religion, not science. They used this wording saying there is one single solution. It will save you from the evil, the invisible virus. Finally, to the people, this became really like believing in a religion. There was no logic anymore.

Weltwoche: And Pfitzer paid all of this?

Baldan: I discovered that Hill & Knowlton were paid by Pfizer. They didn't declare that they worked for Pfizer, which is a violation of the EU law. After that, I discovered that Ms. von der Leyen attended an event with the slogan “Science Will Win”, just like the terrible slogan of this lobbying firm. We have Pfizer that paid Hill & Knowlton to lie to the public. And Ms. von der Leyen took part in this lobbying campaign, and it was illegal.

Weltwoche: There are 50000 lobbyists in Brussels which is an enormous army of influencers. You're a former lobbyist. How destructive are they to the democracy of the European Union?

Baldan: I'm not sure that I'm really like them because I was a kind of UFO in this industry. A reason why they are so numerous is that the Commission itself gives our public money to these lobbies. They say, we have a program to give funds for an ideology. They say it's to support diversity, or to fight against fake news and these kinds of things. The Commission takes our money to basically fund many lobbies. They pretend to be NGOs, but it's totally fake. An NGO is supposed to be non-governmental. But if 95% of your budget comes from the Commission, it means that it's not possible to be an NGO.

Weltwoche: You just said that EU Commission “gives public money to lobbies”. I thought it's the other way around. That lobbies promote something and try to win the members of parliament and politicians on their side.

Baldan: It's influence laundering. The origin of this lobbying is the Commission itself. This is the way they spread their own ideology. They say this is someone from the civil society asking me to do something, but it's not true. This is the Commission paying someone to appear to be the civil society and then give itself an appearance of legitimacy.

Weltwoche: You've experienced this firsthand?

Baldan: Yes. I even notified some lobbies doing so. It's obvious. Ms. von der Leyen decided to hire an independent expert to give advice to the Commission and herself. It’s a man called Peter Piot, a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS, At the moment he was in charge of the Commission he was also paid by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It's just terrible. They claim, « oh, we don't have any conflict of interest. » These institutions are not democratic. Like Ms. von der Leyen herself. In mainstream media, you can often read that she was elected by the parliament, but it's not true. She was appointed by the parliament. She is a civil servant.

Weltwoche: What are the chances that you will be successful with your case?

Baldan: It's not over. They tried to cancel the investigation because it went too far and it endangered Ms. von der Leyen. Today, we have all the documents from the first investigation. I would say, they helped us because now we have some way to act with additional legal proceeding and we will save time because it's much more direct and we will use the documents of the investigation, like the 1000 pages police report.

Weltwoche: You have paid a high price, you lost your lobbying license, you lost your job, and a few days ago they closed your bank accounts, including your young son's bank account. What keeps you fighting on?

Baldan: I often read comments saying that I was very courageous of doing this action to stand for the human rights and freedom. In fact, it's a totally different situation. I am fully aware that if we do nothing, we will live in a tyranny. There will never be any democracy anymore if we accept that they destroy the freedom and fundamental rights. Also, it's not possible, in my mind, to abandon all these people that are suffering today because of Ms. von der Leyen. We have no other way than fighting these people.

Frédéric Baldan: The Global Covid Cartel (Rights & Freedom Press). Coming soon.