EU says fighting growing cases of COVID vaccine fraud

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission is taking action to curb growing cases of COVID-19 vaccine fraud and bring people responsible for it to justice, the president of the EU's executive said on Wednesday.

"In a crisis like this you will always have people who attempt to profit from the problems of others," Ursula von der Leyen told a news conference. "And we see a growing number of fraud and fraud attempts related to the vaccines."

"We are fighting this trend," she said adding that the European Union's anti-fraud office OLAF is investigating and giving EU member states advice on how to identify fraud.

She said that it can be extremely risky to take vaccines offered by black market traders because there is no guarantee that the cooling chain process for its travel from factory to syringe has been respected.

(Reporting by John Chalmers, editing by Marine Strauss)