A shipment of protective masks that was bound for Berlin was diverted in Thailand and sent to the US, the Financial Times reported Friday.
Andreas Geisel, Berlin's interior minister, told the newspaper that the diversion of the 200,000 masks was "an act of modern piracy."
German officials first said that the masks were from US manufacturer 3M, but later said authorities were working to clarify where the masks came from.
3M denied the initial report, saying "3M has no evidence to suggest 3M products have been seized."
President Donald Trump had criticized 3M for sending masks to countries other than the US, though the company has also increased imports to the US of the critical protective equipment.
Mike Roman, the CEO of 3M, on Friday called Trump's criticism "absurd" and said that stopping shipments to other countries would pose a humanitarian risk.
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A shipment of protective masks that was bound for Germany was diverted in Thailand and sent to the United States instead, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
The masks were first reported to have come from US manufacturer 3M, but German officials later told the Financial Times that they were working to clarify which company manufactured the masks.
3M told Business Insider in a statement that "3M has no evidence to suggest 3M products have been seized. 3M has no record of any order of respirators from China for the Berlin police. We cannot speculate where this report originated."
The diversion of the 200,000 protective masks intended for healthcare workers and emergency staff members in Berlin was "an act of modern piracy," Andreas Geisel, Berlin's interior minister, told the Financial Times.
President Donald Trump on Thursday invoked the Defense Production Act to force 3M, based in Minnesota, to prioritize making protective equipment like masks for the US.
The Trump administration has criticized 3M for sending protective equipment to countries other than the United States, though the company has also ramped up imports into the US — it said on Friday that it recently got approval to send over 10 million N95 respirator masks to the US from its facilities in China.
Various N95 respiration masks at a 3M lab contracted by the US government to produce extra marks in response to the country's novel coronavirus outbreak. Reuters
The White House and the German Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Mike Roman, the CEO of 3M, responded to Trump's criticism on Friday, telling CNBC that it was "absurd" and that the company had "been telling the administration for days and days" about its efforts to bring protective equipment like the in-demand N95 respirator masks into the US.
The Trump administration asked 3M to stop exporting masks made in the US to Canada and Latin America, 3M said on Friday. The company said that halting those exports would have "significant humanitarian implications" in those regions, where it is "a critical supplier of respirators."
Editor's note: This story has been updated to incorporate a statement from 3M.
MBAMBA3 on April 5th, 2020 at 04:54 UTC »
3M is almost like its own country its in the news so much these days.
AdmiralAkbar1 on April 5th, 2020 at 04:14 UTC »
And it also turned out that the Quebec story was a clerical misunderstanding and the masks made it to Montreal. So both of these stories turned out to be misunderstandings that redditors took at face value.
PawanYr on April 5th, 2020 at 03:02 UTC »
Some context: It seems that German officials still believe someone outbid them for masks. However, a lot of the initial details from the report, such as 3M being the manufacturer, and the US government being the new purchaser at Bangkok airport, have been called into question or proven false since the Berlin Interior Minister issued his passionate statement. The Interior Ministry now says that it is 'clarifying the details', and that the order was likely from a German manufacturer instead. In keeping with this, 3M says they don't have any record of a sale to Berlin, something which the Berlin Police Force has not refuted. As always, please be mindful that this is all developing quickly, and some of the reporting around all of this has been less than accurate.
Edit: It seems like the Berlin Interior Minister who started this firestorm has himself begun to backtrack. His spokesman now says that he would no longer use the word 'confiscate'. The transport company, however, says that the plane still ended up in the US, while the Berlin Police say that the masks could have just been bought by another company at a better price, rather than being 'seized' as was originally reported. Meanwhile, anonymous US officials are denying everything. All in all, a lot of conflicting information.