Contracts, Data and Investigations – Edition 2021-11-09
This week: well-connected US law firms, shady maritime monitoring in Nigeria, collusion schemes in Colombia, big business scrambles to meet net-zero rules
This newsletter gathers stories covering the use and abuse of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Share your stories and investigations with us. We’d love to read and feature them. And we’d love a like if you enjoyed the read.
An analysis by inews’ Madeleine Cuff finds that a fifth of FTSE100 companies don’t have their greenhouse-gas net-zero plans in place – a new requirement for companies wanting to do business with the UK government. While the precondition is far from perfect, it’s a nudge in the right direction to exploring smarter ways to green public contracts. This article by Tortoise Media’s Carla Rosch has more.
In the US, an investigation by The Caucus and Spotlight PA found that politically connected law firms are donating millions of dollars to the campaigns of Pennsylvania legislators, who in turn hire those firms to provide legal services. It took reporters months to organize the records they obtained through FOIA requests and match invoices to documents. In the last two years, lawmakers paid nearly $10 million on public contracts to many of the same law firms and lawyers making contributions, revealed Angela Couloumbis and Sam Janesch. For a full list of the legal battles check this table.
Nigeria’s president and transport minister have courted controversy over a million-dollar contract for an electronic shipping monitoring system, which the procurement agency flagged for irregularities, according to an investigation by Premium Times’ Taiwo-Hassan Adebayo and Ayodeji Adegboyega. Neither of the contractors, a medicine services and a property company, have any record of delivering services for tracking maritime traffic.
Health clinics across South Africa’s Gauteng province have reported thefts and concerns over staff safety, despite the province spending millions of rand on security contracts, according to The Daily Maverick’s Spotlight Thabo Molelekwa and Alicestine October. Their investigation found the health department has paid 59 security companies more than R2.6-billion since the 2017/18 financial year, through contracts that expired five years ago and have since been extended from month to month.
The new tool Procurement Watch by Corruption Watch South Africa aggregates and processes data from the individually published reports published by the National Treasury between 2016 and 2020. Read the first report analyzing the procurement information.
At Colombia’s La Silla Vacia, Natalia Arbelaez Jaramillo and Steffy Lorens Riquett Bolaño explore the six systemic flaws that allow criminals to plunder contracts with impunity, including the mastermind of a collusion scheme who was jailed for fixing a contract to supply internet to rural schools and walked free with a reduced sentence after seven years. A Who’s-Who of the ring’s key players is detailed in this report by Juan Esteban Lewin.
The US Treasury has sanctioned two Lebanese businessmen and a member of parliament for undermining Lebanon’s rule of law and profiting off corruption in multi-million-dollar contracts, reports Axios’ Shawna Chen.
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 you’ve written to share? Write to Sophie and Georg at gneumann@open-contracting.org. Thanks for reading.
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