alt Hacker NewsCovid was the same. In the UK the government created a corrupt scheme where politicians and their mates were first in the queue for personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts. Fortunes were made.
Any kind of emergency is an opportunity for graft.
P.S. Two separate enquiries found that this was fine because the corrupt scheme was fairly operated according to its corrupt terms of reference. They didn't consider whether the scheme was corrupt per se.
That always seemed so strange to me; the concept of a VIP lane _sort_ of makes sense if the criteria for entry is that you're an expert in the field, i.e. a logistics company or existing supplier of the NHS. Not just that you're friends with someone in a position of authority.