Contracts, Data and Investigations – COVID-19: Edition 2020-07-03
This week: prices for masks and ventilators in Latin America, faulty masks flooding Europe and the case for procurement reform
This newsletter gathers stories covering the use and abuse of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. If you like it, give it a like and share it with your colleagues. Let us know about your stories and content. We, Sophie and Georg, would love to hear about them.
Some excellent data-driven reporting has been published in Latin America this week.
Red Palta launched its second regional investigation into coronavirus crisis spending. Mask purchases in Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay included excess costs of $282,000, an analysis of contracting data by Ojo Público’s Ernesto Cabral shows. In Colombia, Datasketch’s Juliana Galvis and Johan Romero unmask the companies behind emergency contracts, in a feature for El Espectador. At la diaria, Juan Aldecoa, Natalia Uval, Stephanie Demirdjian investigate price gouging in Uruguay. In Guatemala, Isaias Morales finds that PPE suppliers haven’t been required to meet hygiene standards. Project PODER’s Claudia Ocaranza tracks down inexperienced providers of overpriced masks in Mexico. And in El Salvador, El Faro’s Sergio Arauz and Jimmy Alvarado investigate a $3 million mask deal between the health ministry and a ceramics firm. (The investigation is supported by the OCP).
An investigation into ventilator purchases in nine countries, by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (El Clip), reveals authorities who bought the devices in bulk and from domestic suppliers, got better prices. Based on data aggregated from government platforms, information requests and interviews, the report compares brands, suppliers and costs over time. The database can be accessed here (Excel).
Olivia Sohr and Juan Manuel González find a lack of transparency in Argentina’s ventilator contracts. Ana Anjos reports from Brazil, Dario Klein from Uruguay, and Jazmín Acuña for El Surti in Paraguay. Four countries had to cancel their purchases.
Impressive collaborative reporting is also being done across the Atlantic, with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project conducting an Europe-wide investigation into misleading compliance certificates for PPE. Among the reports published by the consortium’s 16 media partners, Aubrey Belford, Sarunas Cerniauskas, Matteo Civillini and Ola Westerberg explore the fake and faulty masks that flooded the region. For Bayerischer Rundfunk, Anne-Kathrin Wetter and Maximilian Zierer track the delivery of at least 800,000 of these masks to doctors in Germany. And RISE’s Ana Poenariu and Andrei Ciurcanu go undercover to identify the players in Romania’s mask black market.
In Asia, the Kathmandu Post’s Arjun Poudel provides a fascinating look inside the chain of command at Nepal’s health ministry during the pandemic. As aid funds reach Afghanistan, Sayed Salahuddin at Arab News documents the mounting criticism over embezzlement, misuse and alleged corruption, amid a severe lack of resources and protective equipment. Test kits from Chinese firm BGI are under scrutiny in Australia and the US, with reporting by The Guardian’s Christopher Knaus and Ben Smee, and the Washington Post’s Jeanne Whalen and Elizabeth Dwoskin, respectively.
In Hong Kong, the government spent just short of US$1 million on advertising a controversial national security law before details of the measures had been finalized, reports Kelly Ho for the Hong Kong Free Press.
No contracts newsletter would be complete without a story from the US. ProPublica’s Jeremy Schwartz and Perla Trevizo reveal how the builder of a privately funded border wall leveraged the project to secure over a billion dollars worth of federal contracts. Built on the banks of the Rio Grande, the wall is already at risk of falling down, experts say.
The COVID-19 crisis has put public procurement in the spotlight. For Devex, Catherine Cheney writes on how the pandemic response has made the cost of getting it wrong evident, with comments by our Executive Director Gavin Hayman making the case for procurement reform.
In a special feature supported by UNOPS, The Economist Intelligence Unit looks at the future of public spending and lessons from COVID-19.
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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