Contracts, Data and Investigations - Edition 77
This month: A focus on climate investigations & resources, a new procurement database in Canada, new data from Rwanda and investigations from Brazil, India and Kenya
Welcome back to our newsletter, covering stories about the use and abuse of public contracts and providing tips and insights on how to investigate public procurement. Are you investigating a public contract right now? Get in touch – we’d love to help.
[What we’re keeping an eye on]
Flying high? Going against expert advice, the Kenyan government accepted a “privately-initiated proposal” to expand the country’s main airport, reports OCCRP’s Georgia Gee. The deal with a member of India’s Adani conglomerate is valued at over US$2 billion. (We also love the design of OCCRP’s new website!)
Anyone can investigate public contracts. This fascinating interview with Cameroonian activist Remi Tassing has us asking what else might be uncovered if more people took a closer look at “where the money goes”. Remi digs through public contract information, passing on potential red flags to his followers, journalists and oversight institutions. “With public procurement, there is a little traceability, insufficient certainly, but part of the iceberg is visible,” says Remi, who works from public documents, posted on the procurement regulator’s website. He cross-references the information with data from the Cameroonian tax services and identifies anomalies, cases of overcharging, and conflicts of interest.
EU pandemic contracts: The European Commission’s COVID-19 vaccine contracts unlawfully concealed contract details, an EU court has ruled. According to a Financial Times’ report on the ruling, the General Court said this information should now be disclosed, including the conflicts of interest declarations by the officials involved. It has also rejected the commission’s argument that disclosing personal information about the negotiation teams would have breached their privacy.
In a new investigative series, Brazil’s Agência Pública explores the relationships between businessmen and the city hall of São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous city. They expose ties between three companies that competed for a R$19 million (US$3.4 million) contract to supply traps to combat dengue mosquitos, and their links to Mayor Ricardo Nunes. Our friends at Investigadora spoke with journalist Amanda Audi about how she dug out and linked up the data.
A focus on climate investigations:
Black coal, low quality. In a country where more than two million people are killed each year by outdoor air pollution, Adani Group allegedly sold low-grade coal as expensive higher-quality fuel to India’s state-owned power company, according to an investigation by Financial Times’ Dan McCrum, Chris Cook and John Reed and OCCRP’s Anand Mangnale. Check out how the coal’s price changes within the value chain in OCCRP’s story.
Rebuilding after floods. Colombia’s El Espectador reveals a new corruption scheme in emergency spending to rebuild after floods in two of the poorest regions of the country. In the story, our Director for Latin America Oscar Hernández calls for greater consistency in contract transparency (noting the contracts were not uploaded to the country’s procurement portal SECOP), and common sense guidelines to prevent collusion.
[Data insights]
New open contracting data: Rwanda has made their public procurement data available in the Open Contracting Data Standard. Access the API end point serving data from 2017 to 2024. Monthly bulk downloads and daily updates will be available soon.
New Zealand: Research by Massey University commissioned by the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission reviewed the accessibility of key documents for 27 large infrastructure projects across central and local government. Accessing information was time-consuming and the accessibility of key documents was poor overall. In particular: 55% of business case documents, 52% of assurance plan documents, and all historical projects’ ex-post reports were inaccessible. At least, all projects replied to official information requests.
How well are countries implementing EU public procurement rules? This page lists the self-assessments of most EU countries.
[Tips from practitioners]
Canada’s Investigative Journalism Foundation has launched a database on public contracts. It includes an impressive 610,000 searchable records, more than 177,000 government tenders and 948,000 awards, and more importantly, it’s updated daily with real-time alerts. Read up on their sources and methodology here.
Those who follow this newsletter know that public contracts account for one of the largest areas of spending by the government, and frankly, some of the weirdest. Some highlights from IJF’s investigation: Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin and its subsidiaries received at least $80 million through more than 460 contracts with the federal government since December 2019, even after the company pleaded guilty to fraud. Others include army goats and 5.7 tonnes of cheese.
Here, the IJF’s Apurva Bhat and Bethany Lindsey share how the IJF team built the database, including standardizing company data to create consolidated profiles for 500 companies and the headache of contextualizing overlapping information from the government’s datasets.
[Data tools & resources]
In July, I joined the Centre for Investigative Journalism Summer Conference in London to share insights on the role of public spending and public contracts in climate investigations.
I reviewed some of the excellent work the open contracting community is doing to present tools and resources that bridge the gap between describing the devastating impact of floods or deforestation; where investments are needed most; and how governments are reacting. Here’s the full presentation including case studies from Bangkok, Brazil, Honduras, India, and Taiwan, as well as a summary of critical red flags in climate infrastructure spending.
My fellow presenters shared other great projects, including Oxpeckers’ #PowerTracker platform that traces renewable energy projects, the MinAlert Africa project that maps mining licenses against protected areas, and InfoAmazônia that features data-driven investigations on the Amazon. A future project idea: how about cross-referencing company names and IDs for government contractors with recipients of environmental fines?
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This newsletter has been put together by the Open Contracting Partnership. Thanks for reading. Do give us a like if you’ve enjoyed the read. Did a friend forward you this email? Then welcome and 👉