Two researchers have been charged in federal court for allegedly trying to bring vials of monkeypox into the United States through Detroit Metro Airport without proper approval.
Vincent Munster of the Netherlands, 53, and Claude Kwe of Cameroon, 38, were charged Tuesday with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox into the U.S. and giving false statements to federal law enforcement. Both are researchers with the National Institutes of Health at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Montana, according to their criminal complaint.
They face a maximum sentence of five years in prison, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.
Their attorneys were not listed in court records Wednesday morning.
The complaint alleges the pair arrived in DTW’s McNamara Terminal on Jan. 25 after returning from the Republic of Congo, where a monkeypox outbreak was occurring. At a checkpoint, Customs and Border Protection officers noticed Kwe behaving nervously.
When CBP officers noticed they had a plastic case, the researchers told them it contained diagnostics and testing equipment. But CBP and FBI agents discovered the case actually contained 113 vials, 17 of which tested positive for monkeypox, the complaint alleges.
Munster allegedly told federal authorities he had the paperwork required to bring the vials into the U.S., but FBI agents determined he didn’t, according to the complaint.
In the complaint, an FBI agent also noted that the stated reason for Munster’s and Kwe’s trip to Brazzaville, Congo was to provide research support for the ongoing monkeypox outbreak “through hands-on assistance in diagnostics, genomic sequencing and bioinformatics implementation and analysis.” It did not mention anything about bringing samples back to the U.S.
“The arrest of these individuals on serious federal charges sends a clear and unmistakable message that no one — including HHS employees who have an obligation to safeguard our federal programs — is above the law,” said Marcus L. Sykes, Special Agent in Charge with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. “Any deliberate effort to conceal and smuggle biological materials into the United States without proper authorization is a breach of the public’s trust and could have placed the public at risk.”
Symptoms of monkeypox include a rash, fever, chills and swollen lymph nodes. It primarily spreads through close bodily contact with a human or animal who has contracted the virus. Outbreaks of the virus have been ongoing in central and eastern Africa since 2023, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The charges come almost exactly a year after a University of Michigan scholar from China was charged for allegedly trying to smuggle a biological pathogen into the U.S.
mbryan@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Feds: 2 researchers brought vials of monkeypox to DTW
Reporting by Max Bryan, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
