A German mayor was suspended by his personal metropolis council after it emerged he had obtained a coronavirus vaccination in January, regardless of not being in a precedence group.
An overwhelming majority of 34 councillors voted late Wednesday to briefly droop Bernd Wiegand, mayor of the central metropolis of Halle.
Wiegand, 64, had beforehand admitted to receiving the vaccine in January, at a time when it was nonetheless solely obtainable to older residents.
Other metropolis staff and several other councillors additionally reportedly obtained a jab earlier than their flip.
The mayor denied that he had acted illegally or immorally, nevertheless, saying he had been supplied the jab with a view to keep away from extra doses going to waste.
“It’s easy to criticise my decision in hindsight… but it was not unlawful in any way,” he stated in an announcement in March, suggesting that the scandal was being exploited to “remove a nonpartisan mayor from office”.
Yet his explanations have additionally assorted over time, with Wiegand at one level erroneously claiming that he had been chosen at random to obtain the surplus dose.
After raiding Wiegand’s places of work in February, prosecutors stated he was suspected of “misappropriating some of the vaccine doses available to the city since December 2020”, however careworn the presumption of innocence.
Germany’s vaccination rollout has been slower than anticipated amid provide points throughout the EU, with 13 % of the inhabitants presently having obtained not less than one dose.
Wiegand can be not the one German politician embroiled in a pandemic-related scandal.
Several MPs from Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance have been pressured to step down in current weeks over allegations of corruption within the procurement of protecting masks.
The graft scandal has hit Merkel’s occasion within the polls, with the conservatives slumping to report lows of simply over 25 % six months earlier than September’s basic election.
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