The embattled former head of the Manhattan nonprofit that performed risky research out of China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak claims to be “unemployed” and “poor” in a $3 million lawsuit filed against his former employer.
Ex-president of EcoHealth Alliance Dr. Peter Daszak was barred this year from receiving federal funding until 2029 for failing to disclose the potentially dangerous genetic enhancement of coronaviruses to the government.
The group’s board of directors ordered Daszak, 59, to fire all 26 of the nonprofit’s employees in December, and then gave him the boot as well, according to court papers filed against the board in Manhattan Supreme Court.
His severance was withheld and he “remains unemployed and is now poor” according to court documents.
Daszak made $443,590, according to EcoHealth’s 2024 tax filings.
The House Oversight Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic uncovered evidence last year indicating that EcoHealth and Daszak, who worked there 24 years, “willingly” and “repeatedly” violated several requirements of a more than $4 million National Institutes of Health grant during his work in China.
“Given that a lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research is the most likely origin of COVID-19, EcoHealth and its former President should never again receive a single cent from the U.S. taxpayer,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said at the time.
EcoHealth Alliance closed its doors in April but former staffers led by Daszak immediately launched a non-profit with a similar mission, Nature.Health.Global, through which he authored a paper in August on “widespread spillover risk of a group of coronaviruses” from Chinese pig farms.
The organization has yet to submit financials to the IRS and did not respond to request on their funding or how much they pay Daszak.
Daszak has also been petitioning to impeach Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., and recently organized a protest in Washington D.C against what he claims is the Trump administration’s “war on science.”
Daszak’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.
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