Two top executives of Emergent BioSolutions, a previously obscure Maryland biotech firm whose Baltimore plant ruined millions of doses of coronavirus vaccine, have agreed to testify on Capitol Hill next week as part of a congressional investigation into their company, a politically connected federal contractor. Fuad El-Hibri, the company’s founder and executive chairman, and Robert Kramer, its chief executive officer, will appear on May 19 before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus, committee officials said on Wednesday morning. The panel has opened a sprawling inquiry into Emergent’s manufacturing failures, and whether the company used its contacts with the Trump administration to land hundreds of millions of dollars in coronavirus vaccine contracts. “Emergent’s actions wasted American taxpayer dollars and reduced the number of doses available for global vaccination efforts,” Representative Jim Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the subcommittee’s chairman, said in a statement to The Times. He said that Congress “is looking for answers and they are long overdue.”An investigation by The New York Times, published in March before the firm’s vaccine manufacturing troubles were known, examined Emergent’s aggressive lobbying tactics and lucrative relationship with the federal government.

Source: New York Times May 12, 2021 12:21 UTC