Illa, during an appearance during the pandemic. /
The supervisory body denounces that the department that Illa directed in some cases did not verify the “solvency” of the companies to which it awarded
The Court of Auditors has detected “incidents” in more than a fifth of the emergency contracts that the National Institute of Health Management (Ingesa) of the Ministry of Health granted in 2020 in the framework of the health crisis due to covid. In the third audit report of the eight that the auditing body plans to carry out on emergency contracting in the public sector during the pandemic, the court has analyzed 73 cases awarded in the 2020 financial year – all of them when Salvador Illa was in charge of Health- for a global amount of just over 551 million euros. And in eleven of them there were irregularities.
The contracts awarded by Ingesa (for an amount of 538 million) constitute 97.68% of the global amount of all the emergency files audited in this third report. “In 22.44% of the contracts audited by the National Institute of Health Management -reveals the court report- there were different incidents in the execution”. In four of the files audited (8.16%) the “early resolution for breach of the contract attributable to the contractor” was agreed, giving rise to the corresponding claims, which are still in progress today “for the recovery of the advanced funds , accrued interest and, where appropriate, damages produced.
There were two other files (4.08%) in which “unforeseen changes occurred” in the contracts (supply of another model of masks but with the same price and characteristics in one case and supply of another type of test-Covid equally effective but more expensive). And in another five awards (10.20%) there were delays in the delivery of supplies.
“Insufficient verification”
Despite the high volume of contracts that have presented problems, the Court of Auditors justifies these breaches because “the acquisitions were made in an exceptional emergency situation and in the context of global shortages.” However, it does denounce that these “incidences in the execution” produced in these eleven contracts “could be indicative of insufficient verification by Ingesa of the production and supply capacity and, ultimately, of the technical solvency of some of the awarded companies at the beginning of the pandemic».
Ingesa’s expense was largely for protection material. Only in FFP2, FFP3 and surgical masks, nitrile gloves and hydroalcoholic gel, the Department of Health spent 246 million euros. However, 91.69% of the amount contracted was allocated to the allocation of masks.
The report reveals the very high prices that the department that Illa directs paid for that material. The FPP2 masks came to pay them at 4.17 euros per unit. FFP3 at 4.68 each.
On the positive side, the Court highlights that the object of all the contracts audited effectively “was directly or indirectly linked to the adoption of measures to deal with the health situation caused by covid.” And there is also “sufficient documentary evidence” in the files of the need to process these awards through the emergency procedure, that is, without competition.
The contracts managed by Ingesa were mostly attributed to the extraordinary credit of 1,000 million euros authorized for this purpose in the Ministry of Health on March 12, 2020, in the first large disbursement against the dawn of the long health crisis that is was coming
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.