They were days of anxiety and fear. But also of a rush and lack of rigor and controls that had never been seen before in the different Spanish administrations. Two years after the start of the pandemic and the first state of alarm, different judges and the Prosecutor’s Office have begun to investigate the cleaning of those millionaire contracts to acquire medical supplies against the clock in a market that has become a great world souk; particularly masks, gloves, epis, covid tests and respirators.
In the midst of the scandal over the acquisitions by the Madrid City Council of the commission agents Luis Medina and Alberto Luceño, the variety of possible irregularities that are being reviewed by Anticorruption, according to sources from this department, is almost endless: inexperienced companies watered with millionaire contracts ; contracts to firms whose address was even unknown; cost overruns accepted without question by the administrations despite the fact that in some cases they reached 1,000% of the value under normal circumstances; intermediary commissions above the actual value of the delivered material; supplies of much lower quality than promised; unusable or non-certified material; awards that were not directly delivered or were only partially delivered; contracts that were published after the deadline; others that, even today, have not been published in the transparency portals; awards riddled with typos and errors; or the use of emergency files for contracts that had nothing to do with the pandemic, such as the purchase of taser guns, tourist campaigns, management of municipal swimming pools or television contracts.
Research data
The complaint filed by Vox
The allocations from the Ministry of Health were to buy masks, fans, gowns and swabs.
Contracts worth €313 million where
The address of the companies is unknown.
25,068 Awards
emergency in 2020
Total
6,444,650,637
0.4% Public sector entities
50.2% Admin. State General
45.8% CC AA and autonomous cities
Four companies with more than
100 million in emergency public contracts in 2020
Hongkong Travis Asia Limited
AUDITED BY THE COURT OF AUDITORS
contracts for value
from €11m
processed by
13 entities state
The 20% of suppliers from whom the Ministry of Health bought medical supplies in the first half of 2020 were totally unknown in the healthcare world.
Hyperin Businesswoman Group
With the corporate purpose of manufacturing lime and plaster, it obtained a Health contract to facilitate 144 respirators worth 3.3 million euros.
Value&Bro
Dedicated to legal activities, she obtained two contracts worth
9.3 million euros to deliver swabs for tests.
price for sanitary material
Between €0.25 and €8/Unit depending on the adjudicator
Price without VAT of the brother of Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
Health came to pay
€5.2 per hyssop to take nasal or oral samples, when its unit value in that
moment was not over
the 1.2 euros.
Sources: Civio Foundation, Anticorruption, Court of Accounts, Civic Foundation and courts of justice
Research data
The complaint filed by Vox
Contracts worth €310m
The allocations from the Ministry of Health were to buy masks, fans, gowns and swabs.
Contracts worth €313 million where the domicile of the companies is unknown.
25,068 Emergency awards in 2020
45.8% CC AA and autonomous cities
Total
6,444,650,637
0.4% Public sector entities
50.2% Admin. State General
Four companies with more than 100 million in awards
public emergency in 2020
FCS Select Products SL
Hongkong Travis Asia Limited
Abbott Laboratories S.A.
Barna Import Medica SA
217,460,000
187,011,013
111,098,401
121,456,938
AUDITED BY THE COURT OF AUDITORS
processed by
13 entities state
The 20% of suppliers from whom the Ministry of Health bought medical supplies in the first half of 2020 were totally unknown in the healthcare world.
Contracts
worth of
€11m
Hyperin Businesswoman Group
With the corporate purpose of manufacturing lime and plaster, it obtained a Health contract to facilitate 144 respirators worth 3.3 million euros.
Value&Bro
Dedicated to legal activities, she obtained two contracts worth
9.3 million euros to deliver swabs for tests.
price for sanitary material
Between €0.25 and €8/Unit depending on the adjudicator
Health came to pay 5.2 euros for hyssop to take nasal or oral samples, when their unit value at that time did not exceed 1.2 euros.
Price without VAT of the brother of Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
Sources: Civio Foundation, Anticorruption, Court of Accounts, Civic Foundation and courts of justice
The review work, as explained in Anticorruption, is huge and could take years, which would probably mean that, once the investigation is completed, the case is prescribed. And it is that the figures that moved in those days are dizzying. According to the Civio Foundation, the entity that is scrutinizing those files with greater rigor, in 2020 alone the public administrations signed 16,589 emergency contracts (that is, by hand and without advertising or competition), which gave the green light to 25,068 awards (some contracts contained several lots). In total, in that first year of the pandemic, 6,445 million euros were released in covid contracts by the different administrations. If only the State is taken into account, it spent 3,236 million without public tenders.
legal risk
The Prosecutor’s Office warns that the cases prescribe, amid controversies such as that of the Madrid commission agents
In this tide of data and figures moves the Prosecutor’s Office, which in most cases under suspicion and despite appreciating “obvious cost overruns” and “excessive commissions”, is throwing in the towel by not having evidence of prevarication, influence peddling, Prohibited negotiations with officials or embezzlement of public funds. The four crimes that would be applicable in principle.
Thus, now there are only two judicial investigations into the excesses of contracts in the pandemic. In the first there are already three defendants. The Court of Instruction number 26 of Madrid has taken a statement as investigated the director of the National Institute of Health Management (Ingesa), Alfonso María Jiménez Palacios; the general director of the Common Portfolio of the National Health and Pharmacy System Service, Patricia Lacruz; and the high position of Hacienda Paloma Rosado. The origin of this case is a Vox complaint against the senior officials of the department headed by Salvador Illa for 56 supposedly suspicious contracts, among which a dozen of them stand out for which Health paid 313 million to companies with “unknown addresses.”
“unknown address”
One of those “address unknown” firms whose awards are being investigated is the second company that earned the most in 2020 from the pandemic thanks to public contracts. This is Hongkong Travis Asia Limited, which won five contracts for more than 187 million.
The second judicial investigation into covid contracts is the one that affects precisely the brother of the Duke of Feria, Luis Medina, and his friend Alberto Luceño. Both, already charged, must testify on the 25th before the Court of Instruction 47 of Madrid, accused of aggravated fraud, false documents and money laundering. In this case, there are three contracts under suspicion for the sale to the Madrid City Council of masks, gloves and rapid tests in March 2020 for 14.5 million. An operation for which the partners would have distributed more than five million in commissions.
Although it continues to expunge hundreds of awards, it is only known that Anticorruption has opened ‘preliminary proceedings’ on another famous contract: that of the 250,000 masks that Priviet Sportive sold for 1.5 million euros to the Community of Madrid with the intermediation of the brother of the Chairwoman. As recognized by the head of the Executive, Tomás Díaz Ayuso charged at least 55,850 euros plus VAT for his intervention in that transaction.
The Public Ministry, for now, has not made any decision on another controversial award package: the twelve contracts worth 326 million euros signed by the Government of Pedro Sánchez during the health crisis and that the Popular Parliamentary Group in the Assembly of Madrid, under Ayuso’s order, denounced Anticorruption on March 10 for allegedly favoring seven companies related to the PSOE.
www.hoy.es
Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.