WHO Deputy Director Ranieri Guerra investigated in Bergamo for “forgotten” pressure on the pandemic plan

False information given to the prosecutors. This is the accusation with which the Bergamo prosecutor’s office – the first to investigate the management of the Covid epidemic in Italy, in particular in Lombardy and in the Bergamo-Valle Seriana outbreak during the first wave – has entered Ranieri Guerra in the register of suspects, Deputy Director of the World Health Organization. On 5 November, Guerra was summoned and questioned by the Bergamo magistrates about the alleged pressure exerted on researchers regarding a study in which Italy’s management of the pandemic was defined as chaotic. And also on the failure to update the national pandemic plan. During his hearing – the prosecutor believes -, Guerra would have made false information, omitting, or in any case not telling what, according to the investigators, he should have known. And that others have instead reported in questioning. Putting the manager in an awkward position. In detail: the main “node” of the issue revolves around the study which, in mid-May 2020, is first published and then deleted from the WHO website: a study which reported that Italy’s management of the pandemic had been “improvised and chaotic”, and that our country’s pandemic plan was still stuck in 2006, without ever having been updated. For this reason, when on January 5 the WHO orders to implement it, it is not clear whether it has been done or not. And, in any case, it would have been a plan that was no longer current and adequate.

But let’s go back to the criminal search. To remove that little “reassuring” study from the site, Guerra – is the prosecutor’s hypothesis – would have put pressure on the researchers of the WHO office in Venice to safeguard relations between WHO and Italy. One of the researchers, the referent of the study Francesco Zambon, in the Prosecutor’s office pointed his finger against Guerra, also citing an email as testimony to what was claimed. An email sent by Guerra to Zambon where he was asked to change the reference to the failure to update the Italian pandemic plan. Inexplicably stuck in 2006 (essentially an old flu plan). All this takes place on 11 May 2020, between the publication of the study and its exit from the site. What happened was told by Zambon: after the approval of the research by the offices of Venice, Copenhagen and the Geneva Committee, the Venetian researcher, contacted by Beijing, asked to be able to correct the research, already online, updating it on what had happened and still was happening in China. After that, however, the study on the WHO website was never seen again.

When on 5 November Guerra was heard by the prosecutors of Bergamo (the pool of magistrates headed by Maria Cristina Rota and coordinated by the chief prosecutor Antonio Chiappani), the investigator expected some feedback. But they did not arrive. Hence the decision to enter the WHO deputy director in the register of suspects. “I hope that the WHO can respond with all the necessary details, explanations and clarifications, since my position is crystal clear despite the insinuations of some”, said Ranieri Guerra after having learned of the guarantee notice. “I am truly amazed and deeply embittered – he adds -. I told the prosecutors everything I knew at that moment, in total good faith. I understood later that I did not have access to much information, but I think the prosecutors have it well I do not even know what these alleged contradictions they may have identified are, given that I have not had access to the questions they put to the WHO. For some time now, through my lawyers, I have confirmed to the prosecutors my full willingness to further detail they deem necessary that I am aware of. I have been and am in absolute good faith and I am amazed that the prosecutors have a different impression “.