July 26, 2021: A member of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) royal family has been implicated in a multi-million Kenyan shilling botched deal to supply one million Russian Covid-19 vaccines to Kenya.
Aurugulf Health Investments, a firm registered in the UAE and linked to the Emirati royalty, reportedly secured a lucrative contract with Kenya-based private healthcare company Dinlas Pharma to ship at least one million Sputnik V jabs to Kenya.
The deal eventually collapsed after the Kenyan government learned the first shipment of 75,000 doses, which arrived on March 22, had not come directly from the Russian government and subsequently blocked them from use at a time Covid-19 cases were surging.
Kenya was the sixth country for which The Moscow Times said it found evidence that Russia awarded Aurugulf or the UAE royal Maktoum Sputnik V resale rights.
It is the third country where the deal has been brokered with private healthcare companies, bypassing the government’s vaccine rollouts.
Kenya’s Dinlas Pharma reportedly paid significantly more than Russia’s advertised price for Sputnik V to obtain the jabs via Aurugulf, the UAE registered firm. According to a pricing schedule obtained by The Moscow Times, Dinlas paid $18.50 (Sh1,998) per dose of the vaccines, almost twice Russia’s factory price of $9.95 (Sh1,074) and planned to sell them to clients in Kenya for $42 (Sh4,536) each.
Both Maktoum and Aurugulf reportedly have connections to the powerful Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser and brother of the leader of Abu Dhabi.
The Kenyan government blocked the use of the first batch of 75,000 jabs after it learned the vaccines had not been delivered directly by the Russian government and banned their use on April 2, having initially granted an emergency use authorisation for Sputnik V on March 9.
The current status of the imported vaccines from the UAE brokered deal is unknown. One of the three batches expires at the end of this month and another at the end of August.
Kenya, which went into a partial lockdown in March after a surge of infections and deaths, started vaccinating the public using just over one million shots secured through the global Covax vaccine-sharing facility free-of-charge from public hospitals.
Commenting on the UAE brokered deal for vaccines that fell through, Kenyan Health Cabinet secretary Mutahi Kagwe said, “There will be no licensing of private players in the importation of vaccines and any such licence given will be and is hereby cancelled,”
“Only 228 Kenyans who have received their first dose of Sputnik V vaccine will be allowed to get their second dose, which was due after 21 days,” Mr Kagwe noted as he banned the importation of Covid-19 vaccines by the private sector on April 2.
After the disaster with the UAE brokered 3rd party vaccine procurement deal, Kenya says the ban on private imports will stay in place until the government becomes confident “that there is greater transparency and accountability in the entire process,” Mr Kagwe added then.
“The rest of the consignment can be sold to other countries.”
Like other nations on the continent, Kenya has struggled to secure vaccines for its citizens, to allow it to fully lift restrictions aimed at containing the pandemic.
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