Mike Pompeo claims China 'bought' WHO chief

The head of the World Health Organisation was “bought” by China, the US Secretary of State has alleged, as he claimed that the body’s failings had contributed to “dead Britons”.

Mike Pompeo made the allegations at a private meeting of MPs in London on Tuesday that Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organisation’s director-general, had struck a deal with China that helped him secure election.

Mr Pompeo said that “when push came to shove, when it really mattered most”, people had died “because of the deal that was made”.

He added that the WHO was a “political” rather than “science-based organisation” that had failed to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Pompeo’s comments came as he began a trip to Europe to put pressure on the UK and America’s EU allies to take a tougher stance against China, and comes just days after Britain announced a ban on Huawei technology in its 5G network.

His remarks also come in the wake of an announcement by Donald Trump, the US president, that America would be withdrawing from the WHO, accusing the organisation of being under China’s control.

The WHO, and Dr Tedros in particular, has been the subject of a wave of criticism from the US.

“WHO is not  aware of any such statement but we strongly reject any ad hominem attacks and unfounded allegations. WHO urges countries to remain focused on tackling the pandemic that is causing tragic loss of life and suffering," a spokesperson for the organisation said on Tuesday night.

Observers say the Trump administration is trying to deflect blame for the pandemic in the run-up to the US elections in November.

The country has the highest number of recorded Covid-19 cases and deaths in the world, and the US’s criticism of the WHO ramped up when the virus started to run out of control in America in March, not when the pandemic began in January. It has been claimed that Mr Pompeo has promoted unproven allegations that the virus leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and accusing Dr Tedros, an African, of corruption is seen by some as a “racist trope”.

Mr Pompeo declared in the same meeting that Washington had shared intelligence with the British Government on Chinese officials alleged to be involved in the persecution of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, and suggested that the UK should pull out of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

While Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, has suggested that it could take months to investigate Chinese officials, Mr Pompeo’s remarks are likely to be interpreted as an attempt to pressure Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, to impose sanctions on Beijing immediately.

Mr Pompeo held talks with Mr Raab and Mr Johnson on Monday, during which they discussed China, US-UK trade talks, and the case of Harry Dunn, the British teenager who was killed when a US diplomat’s wife allegedly collided with him while driving on the wrong side of the road. Mr Johnson told Mr Pompeo there was “a strong feeling among the people of the UK that justice must be delivered”.

Before his meetings, Mr Pompeo spoke at a private meeting of Conservative and Labour China “hawks” the meeting, organised by the Henry Jackson Society think tank, where he said of the WHO: “This is a political, not a science-based organisation and I talk to our experts ... they will tell you that there are pieces of it that work.

“But when push came to shove, when it really mattered most, when there was a pandemic in China, Dr Tedros, who was ... bought by the Chinese government, I can’t say more, but I can tell, I’m saying this on a firm intelligence foundation, a deal was made... there was a deal making election and when push came to shove, you get dead Britons, because of the deal that was made.”

Dr David Nabarro, the UK candidate who ran against Dr Tedros for the role of WHO director-general in 2017, said it was imperative that all countries worked together to fight the “massive global catastrophe” of Covid-19.

He said he could not understand why the US, until recently a leader in pandemic planning, was withdrawing its support “just at the time when the world needs it most”.

On Dr Tedros, he added: “I’ve been working with him on this since Jan 31, because it’s so serious. And in all the time that I’ve worked with him since then I’ve seen him being fair-minded and responsive to all nations, and concentrating on what matters the most, which is getting on top of this pandemic.

“I just don’t recognise the kind of remarks made by the US Secretary of State.”

In a letter sent to Dr Tedros, a former Ethiopian health minister, in May, Mr Trump accused the WHO of having an “alarming lack of independence from China” and accused the agency of “consistently” ignoring “credible reports” of the virus spreading in Wuhan at the start of last December.

It came as trade tensions between London and Beijing appeared to escalate on Tuesday after state-controlled media reported that China was threatening to target British firms, including HSBC and Jaguar Land Rover, in retaliation over Huawei and Hong Kong.

The Global Times cited Communist Party officials as threatening a response against UK companies.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice claimed Chinese hackers broke into a British artificial intelligence start-up in April, as part of a wider cyber campaign targeting virus research.

Washington officials have charged two Chinese nationals with hacking “hundreds” of victims around the world to gain access to companies’ intellectual property. Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi, former classmates at an electrical engineering college in Chengdu, China, illicitly accessed the corporate networks of an unnamed “UK artificial intelligence and cancer research firm” in April, according to court documents published on Tuesday.

The pair are accused of a decade-long spree of industrial espionage, including stealing software source code, weapon designs and other products.

They recently switched their focus to look for coronavirus research, targeting test kit manufacturers and biotech companies working on treatments and vaccines, Washington claimed.

John Demers, the US Justice Department’s national security chief, said: “China has now taken its place, alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea, in that shameful club of nations that provide a safe haven for cyber criminals in exchange for those criminals being ‘on call’ to work for the benefit of the state, here to feed the Chinese Communist Party’s insatiable hunger for American and other non-Chinese companies’ hard-earned intellectual property, including Covid-19 research.”