Authorities in Germany have fallen victim to a €14.7 million (Dh58.6m/US$15.9m) fraud involving coronavirus masks.
North Rhine-Westphalia paid €14.7m for 10 million masks in March only to discover they did not exist, according to prosecutors in Traunstein, Bavaria.
The German managing director of two distribution companies based in Zurich, Switzerland, and Hamburg, Germany, raised the alarm after realising that he had been tricked.
According to the Bavarian investigators, 52 vehicles had been lined up to collect the masks in the Netherlands and deliver them under police protection.
The managing director told police he had received an offer from companies allegedly based in Asia in mid-March to supply the masks and subsequently placed the large order from North Rhine-Westphalia.
State authorities then transferred €14.7m to the company, which made a €2.4m down payment.
The distribution company has now refunded €12.3m to the German authorities. However, it remains unclear whether the remaining €2.4m, which has been frozen in foreign bank accounts, can be recovered.
The fraud comes as Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday a lesson to be learnt from the pandemic was that Europe needed to develop self-sufficiency in the production of critical medical equipment such as masks.
"Regardless of the fact that this market is presently installed in Asia ... we need a certain self-sufficiency, or at least a pillar of our own manufacturing" in Germany or elsewhere in the European Union, Mrs Merkel told reporters in Berlin.
On Wednesday, German car maker BMW announced it would start producing face masks to help protect its own staff and the public against the spread of the virus.
Chief executive Oliver Zipse said BMW would soon be able to produce several hundred thousand masks per day.
The company has delivered 100,000 masks to the government from its own existing stocks, and handed over another 50,000 masks and a million medical gloves on Wednesday, with a further million masks to be delivered in the next two weeks.
BMW said on Monday that a production stoppage at its car factories due to the virus is being extended by two weeks until April 30.
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Germany rose by 4,003 in the past 24 hours to 103,228 on Wednesday, climbing for the second straight day after four previous days of drops, data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases showed.
The reported death toll rose by 254 to 1,861 on Wednesday.
