Contracts, Data and Investigations – Edition 2021-12-03
Vaccine makers call the shots, Africa’s choice: COVID-19 jabs or basic health services, German bribery case dropped, a pig for a public works tender in Costa Rica
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.
The emergence of the new Omicron variant has heightened criticism over vaccine inequality around the globe. The Financial Times explores how COVID-19 vaccine makers like Pfizer are wielding their “newfound power” to keep their deals with rich and poor nations shrouded in secrecy. Read the inside story by Hannah Kuchler, Donato Paolo Mancini and David Pilling. Here’s more on why vaccine procurement should be open from OCP’s Kristen Robinson.
In more than half of African countries, COVID-19 vaccination costs are estimated to exceed the government’s total health spending – and jeopardize scarce budgets for essential health services. Washington-based think tank Center for Global Development has teamed up with the Africa CDC Health Economics Unit to create a toolkit for making informed decisions on COVID-19 vaccine procurement, including which vaccines offer the best value for money.
With the first antiviral pills on the market, COVID-19 treatment is set to become a medical procurement staple, an opaque market dominated by monopolies and patents. But transparency can influence people’s access to medical treatment: just ask these patient advocates in Moldova, who worked with the government to make the medical procurement system more open and supply more affordable medicines to patients with HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and tuberculosis. Here’s a spreadsheet of the country’s medicine prices.
Parliamentarians who added firms to UK’s high-priority “VIP” lane of COVID-19 suppliers have been named, via a list leaked by Politico Europe. These companies were 10 times more successful at securing PPE contracts and earned a total of £1.7 billion, reports Emilio Casalicchio. Meanwhile, the country’s emergency procurement rules remain in place and consultants are being paid £1m per day for England’s test and trace program, writes The Guardian’s Andrew Gregory.
In Germany, a Munich court has ruled that it was not actually illegal for parliamentarians to earn commissions from brokering deals for face masks, and ordered millions of euros seized from the two elected officials to be returned. But even the court made it clear it was dissatisfied with the verdict, and called for the law to be changed. In better news, a new register will allow contracting agencies to do a legal background check on companies, including for corruption convictions, before they sign a contract. Government agencies will start filing information on 1 December and it will be mandatory to check the register starting 1 June 2022. While this is a good start, the information should be public to ensure public accountability.
Costa Rica’s public works have been targeted by organized crime networks this year. In the most recent case, dubbed “Azteca”, a gang - allegedly engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering - created companies to participate in public works tenders. The scheme was reportedly used to launder money with the help of officials from the Costa Rican Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers, write Eillyn Jiménez and Fátima Jiménez Quirós for La Nación. Some of the bribes apparently included a suckling pig for a Christmas party.
Todos Los Contratos is a new civil society-driven platform that collects, analyzes and visualizes the country’s public contracts. Run by Innovaap at the University of Costa Rica with support of PODER, the platform can be accessed at https://todosloscontratos.cr or search the contracts yourself on Quienesquien.Wiki.
ICIR Nigeria has been digging into some of the country’s large-scale infrastructure procurement. In this story, Elijah Ojonicko Akoji uncovers how Nigeria’s government wasted over N350m on ghost water projects in the northern part of the country, by paying to briefcase companies who never implemented the project. Kenechukwu Andeh finds the Eastern Raile line remains in ruins, despite billions invested over the last 10 years.
In this story, we show how patient organizations and journalists joined forces to investigate medicine contracts in Mexico, developing the data report Salud, Dinero y Corrupción [Health, Money and Corruption]. Months of downloading data and a detailed analysis of two million contracts between 2008 and 2018 revealed an overspend on the IMSS’ medicine purchases of more than 18.4 billion Mexican pesos (around $925 million) during that period. Review the data.
In part two of our series with The Africa Report, Alex Macbeth profiles champions attempting to reform how governments spend public money in Africa, including an activist in Cameroon, an anti-corruption campaigner in Kenya, and a procurement officer and data analysis firm in Nigeria.
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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