It all started with more than 5,700 doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine hidden in two coolers.
The customs and military authorities announced last week the discovery of thousands of bottles inside a private plane parked at the Campeche International Airport, in southern Mexico, destined for San Pedro Sula, the most populated city in Honduras.
After the seizure was made known, suspicions about a possible theft of the drugs multiplied, a hypothesis ruled out by Russia and the Mexican authorities, who pointed out that they were apocryphal products.
The plot has now taken an unexpected turn.
Pakistani millionaire Yusuf Amdani, one of the most powerful men in Central America, has acknowledged that he is behind the failed shipment of the drugs.
"The purpose of bringing these vaccines was solely and exclusively to be applied free of charge to our employees and their families," said Grupo Karim's, owned by Amdani, in a statement.
"At no time and under no circumstances did Grupo Karim's intend to illegally introduce vaccines," added the company, with strong interests in the textile and real estate industry and a presence in Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, the Dominican Republic and four Central American countries.
The firm argued that it had the right to seek vaccines on its own, outside of government negotiations, due to the principle of access to health, enshrined in the Honduran Constitution.
He also justified in the bulletin that he suffered "a severe blow" in his operations after the arrival of the covid-19 pandemic.
"With the best of intentions, alternatives were sought for the acquisition of vaccines in order to safeguard the lives of our employees and their families," the company insisted.
The figure of Amdani, who has a Honduran passport, emerged in recent days after the Honduran newscast
Noticieros Hoy Hoy
published that his name appeared on the papers of a Cessna 414 plane with capacity for eight passengers and two crew members, and registration HR-AYI.
The Mexican Army did not detail at the time who the aircraft belonged to and limited itself to saying that it had seized it, along with the contraband vaccines.
The crew, all Hondurans, had been presented to the Attorney General's Office (FGR).
A
Univision
investigation
stated, citing military sources, that the detainees had been released by order of the Mexican government, specifically, the Ministry of Foreign Relations.
At the time of the arrest, one of the companions, identified as collaborators of the Pakistani businessman, threatened the soldiers and told them that "they did not know who they were dealing with," according to the report.
The Honduran press reports that Amdani arrived in the country in 1991, has important political connections and is one of the businessmen closest to the president, Juan Orlando Hernández.
Although he is designated as one of the richest men in Honduras, there is no consensus on the size of his fortune, although
Forbes
cites investments of 100 million dollars in 2019. In Mexico, alleged links of the billionaire with the conservative Action Party have been highlighted. Nacional and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Campeche is one of the most important fiefdoms for the PRI and where its leader Alejandro Moreno is from.
In the first half of last year, Amdani made several donations in Campeche of supplies to fight the pandemic and was caught posing with the PRI governor Carlos Miguel Aysa González.
Those ties to politics have come to light again in the plot of the alleged Russian vaccines.
One of the documents that have been leaked to the press is a permit from the Honduran Ministry of Economic Development that authorized the flight to Mexico, which raises doubts about whether the Central American authorities were aware in advance of the irregular shipment of vaccines to their territory.
The same type of vaccines that were seized were also applied to more than 1,000 workers at a Grupo Karim's plant in Campeche, according to the newspaper
Reforma
.
The vaccines were also distributed to carriers and collaborators outside the company who, according to the testimonies collected, signed a document in which they desisted from taking legal action for the immunization.
The concern now is that they do not know what they were injected with.
Officially, Sputnik V has only been applied in Mexico City, more than 1,000 kilometers from Campeche.
The Russian Direct Research Fund (RDIF), the government body in charge of developing and promoting Sputnik V abroad, spoke from the outset of a "provocation" to discredit its vaccine.
"The analysis of the photographs of the seized batch, including the design of packaging and labels, suggests that it is a false substance that has nothing to do with the original vaccine," explains the RDIF in a statement.
"The shipping procedure also violated the packaging and transportation protocols for the official Sputnik V vaccine," he continues.
THE COUNTRY found that the vials that transported the vaccine also had misspellings in Russian.
Just last March 9, eight days before the seizure, the Honduran government announced that it had agreed with Russia the arrival of four million doses of Sputnik V. It was until March 13 that the Central American country, one of the the poorest on the continent, received a first shipment of vaccines with 48,000 doses through the Covax mechanism.
Since then, Honduras has only managed to immunize about 43,000 inhabitants out of a population of almost 10 million, according to the Our World in Data database.
Almani, who apparently has not been detained, apologized in desperation for the slow vaccination and urged the Hernández Administration to collaborate with the private sector.
"The Government of Honduras should not face this crisis alone," the statement read.
The main unknown, as from the beginning, is where those 5,000 false doses came from: the main one pending in the joint investigation that Russia and Mexico announced after the seizure.
Subscribe here
to the
newsletter
of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current situation of this country