Contracts, Data and Investigations – COVID-19: Edition 2020-11-06
This week’s content: consultants in Australia, tracking contract extensions in the UK, Keep the Receipts in South Africa
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’d love to hear about them.
While we’re refreshing the US election trackers for the final votes to be counted, here comes our 30th edition. To date, we’ve shared more than 300 investigations into government responses to the pandemic, new databases to investigate public contracts, and some other noteworthy stories of procurement in shambles. These are this week’s stories:
Politicians continue to turn to consultants to analyze what comes next. Australia’s New South Wales government hired the Boston Consulting Group in a no-bid direct award over AUD$1m to "understand the changing shape of the post-COVID economy," paying above market rates, Alexandra Smith reports for The Sydney Morning Herald.
With some of the first contracts for critical pandemic services such as testing schemes coming to a close, The Guardian’s Juliette Garside and Joseph Smith find that a company with links to the UK government was given a 6-month contract extension of £347m. This is the same company whose testing kits had to be recalled over the summer.
Paying up-front is always a high-risk strategy, and doing it with a firm you’ve never worked with before is definitely not a good idea in the middle of a pandemic. Mark Harris and David Pegg report on a £46m UK deal for masks that never arrived.
In South Africa, the government has announced a return to normal procurement processes. Keep the Receipts, a new platform developed by civil society organizations Public Service Accountability Monitor and OpenUp, turned government information into a searchable open data tool where users can find what departments and provinces bought, and who was paid to supply it.
We covered OCCRP’s investigation into Europe’s COVID-19 spending two weeks ago. In a new story for the EU Observer, Staffan Dahllof and Adriana Homolova follow up on some of the contracts that have gone wrong, such as ventilators sold without certificates, and dealing with failed access to information requests.
Treatment planning: Reuters’ Francesco Guarascio provides more insight into WHO plans for the purchase and distribution of COVID-19 drugs.
A small donation can go a long way in the political arena. In a new investigation for Balkan Insight, Sasa Dragojlo and Ivana Nikolic reveal connections between a government contract and donations to a Serbian arms company blacklisted by the United States, a car trader, and a cluster of companies linked to a gas pipeline construction
How to channel money from a public contract for a dam building project in Azerbaijan to a $2m luxury residence in London, UK: In a new investigation, OCCRP shows how this could have taken place.
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 Georg at media@open-contracting.org. Thanks for reading.
Did a friend forward you this email? Click here to subscribe.