Siga Technologies is controlled by billionaire Obama super-donor Ronald Perelman. Read the backstory here.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A series of e-mail exchanges between officials at the Department of Health and Human Services shows growing alarm at the amount of projected profit from a government contract for a drug company whose controlling shareholder is a longtime Democratic Party activist.

Ronald Perelman is controlling shareholder of Siga Technologies and a longtime Democratic Party activist and fundraiser. He’s also a large contributor to Republicans, but has been a particular friend of the Obama White House.

Also on Siga’s board of directors is Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, who has had close relations with the Obama administration and who has supported President Barack Obama’s health care initiatives.

In May 2011, Health and Human Services awarded Siga a no-bid contract worth nearly $433 million to develop and produce 1.7 million doses of an anti-viral smallpox drug called STS-246. The drug would augment the existing supply of smallpox vaccine now in U.S. control. […]

But internal e-mails obtained exclusively by CNN show a contracting officer assigned to manage price negotiations between HHS and Siga was alarmed at the cost. Siga’s return on investment, one e-mail said, was “an overwhelming 180 per cent.”

The e-mail went on to say that margin “must be cut in half at a minimum” and later added: “I know you won’t find a CO (Contracting Officer) in government who would sign a 3-digit profit percentage.”

In reply, another HHS official, a doctor, agreed.

“Fully concur that 180 per cent is outrageous,” the doctor said in an answer. Moreover, because taxpayer dollars had been used to fund research and development of the drug, “We should get a major discount given our support of front-end development,” the e-mail states.