DETROIT — Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe were charged with smuggling vials of deactivated mpox virus into the United States and lying to authorities during interviews at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in January. A criminal complaint against the two researchers was unsealed in federal court in Detroit following their stop at the airport after a flight from Paris and a nine-day stay in the Republic of Congo.
Munster is chief of the virus ecology section at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, and Kwe works as a research fellow with him at the same facility. Both are virologists who have worked extensively on mpox research, according to the FBI. Tests revealed they were traveling with vials of deactivated mpox virus but failed to declare the materials or obtain required permission to bring them into the U.S. According to the World Health Organization, mpox was first identified by scientists in 1958 during outbreaks of a 'pox-like' disease in monkeys. Until a few years ago, most human cases were seen in people in Central and West Africa who had close contact with infected animals. In 2022, the mpox virus was confirmed to spread via sex for the first time and triggered outbreaks in more than 70 countries that had not previously reported mpox.
According to an FBI court filing, Munster “adamantly denied returning to the U.S. with biological materials or samples.” He also told investigators at the airport that any necessary documents were in his laptop, adding, “But you don’t need them. I do this all the time.” The FBI stated, “It is reasonable to believe that Munster’s statements regarding the possession of the required documentation to customs officers were materially false.” Marcus Sykes of the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services said, “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.”
The government’s court filing did not mention why Munster and Kwe may have wanted to bring the deactivated virus to their lab. Munster and Kwe did not immediately respond to requests for comment. They are expected to appear in federal court in Missoula, Montana, on Wednesday.