China’s top science academy is among three parties suing Missouri for roughly US$50 billion for alleged damage to reputation and economic losses from the US state’s legal action over the Covid-19 pandemic.
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said on Tuesday that her office was notified last week of the civil lawsuit filed in the Wuhan Intermediate People’s Court.
According to court documents, the case was brought by the municipal government of Wuhan, where Covid-19 was first detected, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
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The defendants are the State of Missouri, represented by Governor Mike Kehoe, as well as two of the state’s former top legal officers – Eric Schmitt, now a US senator, and Andrew Bailey, now a co-deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Chinese parties accused the American defendants of trying to “politicise” Covid-19, use the virus to “stigmatise” China, “manipulate origin-tracing” and “slander” China by accusing it of “covering up the pandemic information and hoarding personal protective equipment”.
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The three Chinese plaintiffs were defendants in a lawsuit filed five years ago by Schmitt, then Missouri’s attorney general, which also targeted China, China’s Communist Party, several national ministries and the Hubei provincial government.