Contracts, Data and Investigations – COVID-19: Edition 2020-06-05
Contracts, Data and Investigations – COVID-19: Edition 2020-06-05
A new database on medicine prices, analysis of coronavirus contracts in Mexico and the UK, patients paying more in India, and tales from traders and middlemen profiteering
This newsletter gathers stories covering the use and abuse of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Make sure to subscribe to get this newsletter to your inbox. Let us know about your stories and content. We, Sophie and Georg, would love to hear about them.
Comparing prices: A new database by UNOPS provides a price comparison of drugs used to treat COVID-19 patients. The interactive resource is in Spanish and aimed at Latin America but pulls information from countries worldwide.
We've heard a lot about ventilators, but who produces the oxygen? In its latest investigation, Peru's Ojo Público looks at the companies that dominate the market. Staying in Latin America, Alejandra Crail of Eme Equis analyzes how much Mexico's public hospitals have spent on COVID-related contracts. One company, a marble distributor, provided masks with holes.
Limited competition is an issue in the UK too, according to an analysis of £1.7 billion in contracts by the Financial Times' Tabby Kinder and Gill Plimmer, with data collected by the research company Tussell. Among the 400 contracts awarded between March and May, was a deal with an artificial intelligence firm hired to work on the Vote Leave campaign that may involve analyzing social media data, utility bills and credit ratings, according to partially redacted records obtained by The Guardian's David Pegg and Rob Evans.
The UK will release redacted contracts for health data-sharing deals with tech giants after a legal challenge by journalists at openDemocracy and the tech justice organization Foxglove. The Crown Commercial Services has finally published award information for its ventilator challenge too.
At ProPublica, David McSwane dives into the secretive and absurd world of brokers profiteering from the pandemic. Isaac Arnsdorf reveals that contractors hired a lobbyist to counter negative press around a controversial U.S. food aid program.
Patients are paying more for healthcare in India during the pandemic, finds Anoo Bhuyan in an investigation for IndiaSpend. While cases of potential misconduct in emergency procurement have come to light across the country, including in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka.
In Poland, the health minister has refuted reports by Gazeta Wyborcza's Wojciech Czuchnowski that he procured masks with fake certificates from a family friend.
Documents obtained by Bihus' Maria Zemlyanska show that Ukraine's health ministry paid more than double the price for critical items than non-profit actors.
In an analysis of data from Nigeria's Open Treasury Portal, Aderemi Ojekunle from Dataphyte finds that records for contract payments worth ₦173 billion lacked descriptions, making it impossible to determine the purpose of the expenditures.
In non-coronavirus procurement schemes, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has identified Azerbaijan's sports minister as the powerful backer behind a string of exploitative construction projects, in a years-long investigation by Miranda Patrucic, Ilya Lozovsky, Madina Mammadova, and Kelly Bloss. Across the Caspian Sea, a firm with no experience was awarded a contract to make gas meters in Uzbekistan in a secretive deal worth half a billion dollars, according to an investigation by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service. (We've just launched the Russian-version of our website to provide more open contracting resources to the region.)
The Global Investigative Journalism Network has a new resource out on Researching Government Contracts for COVID-19 Spending. Check out the guide with lots of tips for red flags and examples.
And finally: the Vatican has enacted a new law for awarding public contracts with measures to foster transparency and competition to prevent corruption, including standard prices and fees, and bans on companies convicted or under investigation for illicit activities or based in internationally recognized tax havens.
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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