Contracts, Data and Investigations – COVID-19: Edition 2020-10-30
This week’s content: a special procurement channel for VIPs in the UK, messy spending in the US, not-so-fun facts on emergency procurement from 12 countries
This newsletter gathers stories covering the use and abuse of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. We’d really be happy about a like, and let us know about your stories and content. We, Sophie and Georg, would love to hear about them.
Procuring in the fast lane: The UK government apparently used special procurement channels for ‘VIPs’ and Cabinet contacts, which afforded profit margins of up to 35-45% for insiders, according to leaked government documents obtained by the Good Law Project.
Shifting spending: Following up on last week’s investigation into spending in the state of Illinois, ProPublica’s Ash Ngu and Jodi Cohen, and Jennifer Smith Richards at Chicago Tribune have prepared a look-up tool to sift through 20,000 line items related to $1.6 billion in spending. Here’s what they’ve found and how spending has shifted since the spring.
An investigation by Nick Schwellenbach and Louis Goddard for the Project on Government Oversight finds new evidence of industry ties among political appointees at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), further raising questions over favoritism. The full investigation is here. NPR’s Sydney Lupkin has been tracking COVID-19 vaccine development contracts under Operation Warpspeed by the HHS. One was finally made public – with terms heavily redacted.
No PPE on request: Rachel Clun of Australia’s The Age found hundreds of aged care homes had their requests for PPE rejected by the federal government.
A look at remdesivir deals: Science’s Jon Cohen and Kai Kupferschmidt give Gilead’s major remdesivir deals a more intensive treatment, including a $1 billion purchase made by the European Union shortly before the WHO published disappointing results from a trial of the drug to treat COVID-19.
In Liberia, a preliminary audit by the Internal Audit Agency provides some insight into the government's handling of COVID-19 spend. The review found a lack of authorization for emergency contracts, overspending, payments without valid contracts, reports Gerald C. Koinyeneh for FrontpageAfrica.
Books mean business: In Tajikistan, a company linked to the president’s son-in-law was awarded a $13 million contract for the delivery of 1 million history books, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service finds. The runner-up offer, from a well-known publishing house, was for about $435,000.
1,350,000 contracts. 12 countries. A deep dive into emergency procurement: We've worked with researchers from Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Georgia, Guatemala, Kenya, Lithuania, Nepal, Nigeria, Paraguay, the Philippines, and Uruguay to analyze emergency procurement and identify specific recommendations to improve the response to the pandemic. Download the full report.
Some highlights: In Georgia, 62 contracts (5% of the total value) went to 32 companies established just six months before the pandemic. In Colombia around 30% of firms that won contracts during the emergency had a similar characteristic: they started supplying all kinds of different goods and services, even if they had no experience of selling them in the past. And in Guatemala, researchers found contract records used 62 different descriptions for “face masks.” Where open contracting data exists, researchers were able to build an interactive platform, such as the Control Ciudadano site in Paraguay.
For our recommendations, resources and tools, check our COVID-19 resource page.
This newsletter has been put together by the Open Contracting Partnership. Comments? Suggestions? Got a story to share? Write to Sophie or Georg at media@open-contracting.org. Thanks for reading.
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