Contracts, Data and Investigations – COVID-19: Edition 2020-08-07
This week: America’s contract mayhem, Cannabis businesses cash in, and suspect deals are unmasked in Costa Rica, Chile and UK
This newsletter gathers stories covering the use and abuse of government contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Let us know about your stories and content. We, Sophie and Georg, would love to hear about them. And if you enjoy it, like the newsletter and share with your colleagues.
The United States is in the spotlight. Delays in enforcing an existing contract with a major medical manufacturer led to overpayments of as much as $500 million for ventilators, writes Heidi Przybyla for NBC News. Here’s the full report by the House Oversight Committee and reporting on the original contract by ProPublica’s Patricia Callahan and Sebastian Rotella.
An in-depth investigation by NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston and Tim Mak digs into irregularities in the multi-million dollar deal for a controversial COVID-19 data-collecting system that abruptly replaced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s existing reporting system in the midst of the pandemic. Read more about the investigation in this thread.
Cannabis businesses are cashing in on the crisis, learns ProPublica’s David McSwane while speaking to a “Native American medicine woman” about opportunistic brokers in the underground mask trade.
In an investigation for Bellingcat, Anna Koryakina & Tamta Jolokhava link suspicious contracts from Georgia’s Ministry of Health to newly established companies, donors to the ruling party, and inexperienced firms.
The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control spent N202 million (US$500,000) on six COVID-19 contracts that were unaccounted for in the public procurement agency’s database of planned purchases, according to a report by Olugbenga Adanikin for the International Center for Investigative Journalism.
A communications firm run by a journalist and an accountant are the latest inexperienced providers to win big, this time in Costa Rica in deals worth $4 million for masks, finds Diego Bosque in La Nación.
Chile’s agency in charge of purchasing drugs and medical equipment CENABAST has admitted to paying nearly 30 times the normal price for masks. In CIPER, Matías Jara reports on the logistical issues, failed procurement processes, uncertified products, and brokers plaguing the procurement of protective equipment.
And things aren’t that different elsewhere. The United Kingdom’s woes to procure life-saving equipment continue, as The Times’ Bill Kenber reveals that authorities wasted £150m on masks that were unusable. This thread by Jo Maugham delves into the problematic people and companies behind the deal.
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We’re not the only ones watching public spending during the pandemic. Governments are establishing investigative bodies, agencies and task forces to scrutinize emergency procurement, including South Africa and Ecuador. We’re calling on these efforts to include requirements for publishing timely open data and protocols for scaling back emergency procurement when appropriate. The findings of such inquiries should be made public too.
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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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