Enlarge image
WHO representative Ranieri Guerra: "If I were the minister, I would send us all to hell"
Photo: Mauro Scrobogna / picture alliance / ZUMAPRESS.com
How well was Italy prepared for the corona pandemic?
This has been discussed in the hard hit country for months.
The Bergamo public prosecutor is now investigating Ranieri Guerra, one of the highest-ranking officials of the World Health Organization (WHO).
The suspicion: false statement.
This emerges from an internal investigation report, which SPIEGEL has in its entirety.
Guerra, who previously worked for the Italian Ministry of Health, has long been suspected of sabotaging a critical report on fighting pandemics in his home country.
The public prosecutor's office now has documents in which the 67-year-old speaks openly about his influence, insults employees and also names WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as an alleged accomplice.
Hundreds of bereaved relatives have reported alleged failures in dealing with the corona crisis, demanding clarification and compensation.
The public prosecutor in Bergamo, the region hardest hit by the virus, has been investigating for a long time and has already questioned leading politicians such as the then Italian Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte.
However, the investigators are now also focusing on the WHO.
At the beginning of May 2020, the UN organization published a report that dealt with experiences and problems in fighting pandemics in Italy.
Among other things, it said that Italy had failed to regularly update its pandemic plans since 2006.
But within 24 hours the paper disappeared from the public again.
Since the incident became known, the WHO had denied having censored its experts.
The reason for the unprecedented process are solely content-related errors by the responsible office in Venice and new specifications.
Agreements were also not observed.
Even then, internal mails, which SPIEGEL also had, showed how much pressure the authors of the report had been put under pressure to conceal the outdated pandemic plans.
Even then, the focus was on the then WHO Vice Director Ranieri Guerra, who had contacted the main author several times by e-mail.
Enlarge image
WHO representative Guerra: "If I were the minister, I would send us all to hell"
Photo: Mauro Scrobogna / picture alliance / ZUMAPRESS.com
Guerra himself seemed very sure of his position of power and invulnerability.
The top Italian official of the World Health Organization worked in the Italian Ministry of Health until 2017.
His area of responsibility at the time also included revising pandemic plans, which apparently did not happen as planned.
At the beginning of the corona pandemic last year, the WHO sent Guerra back to Rome so that he could coordinate the exchange with the Italian health authorities at his old place of work.
Staff say the main concern was to help Italy through its historic crisis.
The documents now available show that Guerra may have understood this task too literally.
"I was brutal with the idiots in Venice"
Shortly after the publication of the WHO report, which was embarrassing for Italy, on May 13, the functionary Guerra began an intensive chat with Silvio Brusaferro, the president of Italy's highest health institute, ISS.
Due to his position, Brusaferro is an important figure in the fight against pandemics and is also the spokesman for an expert committee in the Ministry of Health.
Apparently, Guerra felt more indebted to him than to his own co-workers.
In a private chat about the WHO report, which is embarrassing for Italy, the WHO vice assured: "I have sent an apology to the minister and put you in CC." "And" I hope some of the unteachable minds will roll ".
At another point, Guerra takes on the role of the Italian Minister of Health.
He writes: "If I were the minister, I would send us all to hell."
The drastic sentences were apparently intended to show how determined Guerra cared about the reputation of his home country.
A concern that is actually not part of his area of responsibility.
Enlarge image
Obituaries from a newspaper in Bergamo: So far, 115,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Italy
Photo: Flavio Lo Scalzo / REUTERS
WHO employees enjoy diplomatic immunity qua office, they should be able to work scientifically and seriously.
But the UN organization, which is so important worldwide, is also dependent on donations from member countries, a dilemma that has been causing discussions and criticism for years.
Even when investigating the origin of the pandemic in China, it was said time and again that the WHO is sometimes closer to its big donors than to its core tasks.
Another message from Guerra to Brusaferro shows how seriously the top management of the organization sometimes takes the interests of member countries.
In it he frankly explains how the report supposedly disappeared from the public eye: “I finally went to Tedros and had the document withdrawn.
Now I'm checking a few pages and social media portals that it could still be on in order to close all channels. "
Tedros is the nickname of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General.
If the chat messages were correct, the WHO chief would have personally campaigned to have a critical publication by his staff disappear.
The WHO denies that.
If Guerra was untruthful, this would raise the question of why a senior WHO representative is so frivolously putting the reputation of his institution at risk.
The representation that the WHO chief did not know anything about his vice director's actions seems increasingly unlikely: According to a travel report that is available to SPIEGEL and the Italian television magazine RAI Report, Guerra has already passed the WHO chief on May 25, 2020 informs the withdrawn report.
The document should be revised in such a way that it will be "fully accepted" after consultation with the Italian government.
"Private communication between two people"
When the Italian media reported on the case a few days ago, the WHO surprisingly announced that Guerra was no longer Vice-Director of the organization, but a »Special Advisor«.
How it came about and how the new position relates to the investigations of the Bergamo public prosecutor's office has not yet been answered.
His rank will not be affected by the new position, it just says.
The fact that he is now being investigated is largely due to Guerra himself. He made himself available to the investigators as a witness in the autumn despite UN immunity.
Apparently, the information provided by the 67-year-old contradicted the findings of the public prosecutor's office so much that it became suspicious.
In the internal report, which is available to SPIEGEL, four of eight pages are practically all about the news from Guerra, which was obtained in the course of the investigation and is now being used against him.
With the document, the investigators want the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to persuade the WHO to cooperate.
The WHO does not want to comment on this either.
Ranieri Guerra's chats are "private communication between two people" that took place on WhatsApp, it is said.
A detail that isn't even in the investigation report.
Enlarge image
Whistleblower Zambon: pressured and sent away
Photo: Domenico Stinellis / AP
It is not the first time that the reappraisal of the pandemic preparations has left Guerra in a bad shape.
In e-mails that SPIEGEL has received, it is possible to understand how he and other WHO officials reacted to the sensitive report in the past year.
Even before publication, Guerra wrote to the main author, Francesco Zambon, that he should remove the year 2006 in order to conceal the fact that the pandemic report had not been updated since then: "Don't screw that up!" to have been.
He recently left the WHO in a dispute.
Before the affair finally escalated, the World Health Organization tried Zambon
According to SPIEGEL information, to put it in a different position - in Bulgaria, a country that was practically unknown to the Italian health expert.
From his point of view, it was a clear attempt to silence him as a suspected whistleblower and witness.
In his desperation, Zambon also wrote WHO chief Tedros directly at the time.
He says he has not received an answer to this day.
This contribution is part of the Global Society project
Expand areaWhat is the Global Society project?
Under the title Global Society, reporters from
Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe
report on injustices in a globalized world, socio-political challenges and sustainable development.
The reports, analyzes, photo series, videos and podcasts appear in the international section of SPIEGEL.
The project is long-term and will be supported for three years by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
A detailed FAQ with questions and answers about the project can be found here.
AreaWhat does the funding look like in concrete terms?
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is supporting the project for three years with a total of around 2.3 million euros.
Are the journalistic content independent of the foundation?
Yes.
The editorial content is created without the influence of the Gates Foundation.
Do other media have similar projects?
Yes.
Big European media like "The Guardian" and "El País" have set up similar sections on their news sites with "Global Development" and "Planeta Futuro" with the support of the Gates Foundation.
Have there already been similar projects at SPIEGEL?
In recent years, SPIEGEL has already implemented two projects with the European Journalism Center (EJC) and the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: The "Expedition The Day After Tomorrow" on global sustainability goals and the journalistic refugee project "The New Arrivals", as part of this several award-winning multimedia reports on the topics of migration and flight have been produced.
Where can I find all publications on global society?
The pieces can be found at SPIEGEL on the topic Global Society.
