From the USA to Italy an army of lawyers to ask for compensation from China

The world is now moving to seek compensation from China for the coronavirus pandemic. An army of lawyers working against the Chinese government. From United States a Great Britain, but also in Italy and even in India class actions are promoted against the authorities of Beijing for their alleged responsibilities in the Covid-19 pandemic. The accusation against China is that it has not acted promptly to avoid a health crisis that is having heavy economic consequences on a global level, with tens of millions of unemployed and national GDP in free fall. Claims for billionaires compensation unite the various initiatives around the world.

In Italy, the Oneurope non-profit organization is the one ahead, as the chief financial officer and head of the project Ferdinando Perone explains to Adnkronos, according to which “the responsibilities of the Chinese authorities who would not have activated the containment and communication measures envisaged by the international regulations ». The international health regulation, in fact, provides that WHO is notified within 24 hours of any event that could represent an international public health emergency. “This communication was not made,” stresses Perone. The test page for the launch of the class action has been online since yesterday afternoon (https://www.covid19classaction.it), but has already had 335 contacts.

“We plan to collect the adhesions in April and May and then start it in June,” says Perone, recalling that because of Covid-19 “times are extended because all the courts are stopped” and specifying that the promoters of the class action are they pledge to ask for the symbolic sum of one euro because “we are not speculating”.

Missouri’s action is only the latest of the lawsuits filed against China in the United States. Like that of three New York citizens who also denounced the World Health Organization, accusing it of collusion with Beijing. In California, a group of small businesses sued China, the city of Wuhan and China’s Health Commission for keeping quiet, although they have been aware of a highly deadly virus since mid-November.

Another class action in Texas is pursued by the lawyer and founder of the Freedom Watch group, Larry Klayman, who accused China of developing a “biological weapon” and asked for the astronomical sum of 20 trillion dollars as compensation . In Florida, the “Berman Law Group” has promoted a class action that has garnered over 10,000 adhesions against the Chinese Communist Party for negligence. Then there are individual initiatives such as that of the Mumbai lawyer, Ashish Sohani, who denounced President Xi Jinping and four other senior Chinese officers to the International Criminal Court asking for a compensation of 2.5 trillion dollars for the loss of life and economic damage in favor of the Indian government and people. According to the lawyer, Beijing’s attempts to minimize coronavirus are tantamount to a “betrayal of humanity”.

In Italy, finally, the initiative of the Hotel De La Poste in Cortina d’Ampezzo caused a sensation, which sued the Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China for damages before the Court of Belluno. According to the hotel, Chinese officials did not promptly report the spread of the virus to WHO. “Now that the responsibilities begin to emerge, now that the dangerous lack of transparency that characterized the first phase, hidden, of the emergency, is evident, I felt the need to act in first person to ask, indeed, demand an assumption of responsibility », commented the owner of the facility, Gherardo Manaigo.