Piers Corbyn ‘took £10k to change AZ jab stance’
Notorious anti-vaxxer tricked by YouTube pranksters
LEADING anti-vaccine campaigner Pier sC orbynh as been filmed accepting £10,000 to stop criticising AstraZeneca jabs.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s brother is a cult figure among coronavirus conspiracy theorists, and met two men who claimed they had a financial interest in him ‘focusing’ attacks on rival vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer.
After they asked him to stop attacking AstraZeneca, Mr Corbyn was recorded taking an envelope apparently containing £10,000 in cash. But the envelope had, in fact, been stuffed with Monopoly money and the set-up was an undercover sting by two YouTube pranksters.
The pair, comedian Josh Pieters and magician Archie Manners, set up a hidden camera and microphone and used two accomplices to pull off the prank.
Last night, Mr Corbyn claimed the video had been ‘heavily edited’, but did not deny taking the money. The 74- year- old, who was fined £ 10,000 for breaking lockdown rules at a protest earlier this year, met the pranksters at a restaurant in London on Friday, where they showed him an envelope containing £10,000 as a ‘statement of intent’ to ‘ help your campaign’. In the video, Mr Corbyn replies: ‘Wow, that’s brilliant.’
Mr Pieters said he ‘would love to keep funding you’ because he hoped to avoid AZ being hit by public criticism. He said his family’s wealth stemmed from his father’s restaurant business and implied they had invested heavily in AstraZeneca shares. Mr Corbyn replied: ‘Well, as long as I can accept it with no, er, insistence on any policy changes or anything that I’m doing.’
Mr Manners assured him: ‘We’re not asking for a change in policy or anything. But if there’s anything that could be done to focus a bit on Pfizer or Moderna – that would be a useful thing.’ Mr Corbyn replied: ‘ Moderna and Pfizer use those magnetic things, don’t they? Well, that is very, very scary.’
He is then seen scribbling notes while Mr Pieters claims in a voiceover: ‘Knowing that I was an investor in AstraZeneca with a financial interest in other vaccines doing badly, Piers Corbyn started writing down benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine.’ Mr Corbyn then agrees to exclude any mention of AstraZeneca from future campaigns.
In the video, Mr Pieters uses his girlfriend to distract Mr Corbyn with a selfie while he switches the £10,000 cash for Monopoly money stashed in an identical envelope. Mr Corbyn left the meeting clutching the envelope. He said last night: ‘The video has been very heavily edited with dishonest commentary and leaves out my repeated statements that anything we accept has to be unconditional. It is false that I agreed any change in policy whatsoever and I stated to these impostors that all Covid vaccines are dangerous.’