BarcelonaWhen the covid-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020, the Spanish government decreed a state of alarm and, with it, the endorsement to speed up any public procurement to buy health equipment or whatever was necessary to do facing the crisis The emergency procedure, until then used anecdotally and reserved for cases of “catastrophic events”, went on to be used in practically all adjudications by the administrations. It meant giving free rein to contract hiring and independent supervisory bodies quickly began to warn of the lack of controls on this type of contract, either because of the immediacy with which decisions had to be made or because of abuse what became of it.
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As they warned, over the years there have been signs of fraudulent practices in some contracts, such as the one that has become known in recent days that ex-Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos has accused of bribes that his right-hand man would have received for the purchase of masks. However, it is not the only case where corrupt signs have been detected. Two years ago, all eyes were on the management of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and specifically, on the commissions that her brother, Tomás Díaz Ayuso, would have taken, also for the purchase of masks during the worst months of the pandemic. The case was filed by the Spanish and European courts. Shortly afterwards, the investigation by the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office also surfaced of the commissions allegedly taken by two businessmen to buy sanitary equipment for Madrid City Council.
In these cases, there are or have been signs of corruption, but there have been others in which the administrative irregularities have not gone that far. This was the case of the contract with Ferroser – the subsidiary of Ferrovial – which the Generalitat closed, amid an avalanche of criticism, after seven months of awarding without competition for 17.7 million euros the tracing of contagions . Antifraud also detected “irregularities” in the first emergency contracts made by the Generalitat when buying masks, respirators and personal protective equipment, such as that of Basic Devices, for an amount of 60.5 million euros Precisely, already in April 2020 Antifrau made a report claiming more transparency and controls in the administrations and took the opportunity to propose a three-way control mechanism between the General Comptroller of the Generalitat, the Audit Office or the Catalan Authority of the Competition. The Government refused.
The warning bells of the supervisory bodies
At the same time, in the Spanish state, organizations such as the Independent Office for Regulation and Supervision of Contracting (OIReScon), which depends on the Ministry of Finance, have also made several reports regretting that the emergency contracts were not enough justified or that this mechanism was abused once the worst part of the health crisis was over.
For example, in the March 2021 report, which analyzes special recruitment during 2018 and 2019, and the 2020 report – from March 14, when the state of alarm was declared, to 31 of December–. In total, 22,379 contracts were published for a value of more than 7,000 million euros throughout the State. One of the conclusions is that in many of the contracts the “suitability of the justification” could not be checked. “Such supervision (and control by the competent bodies) is essential to avoid possible abuses that may be committed when resorting to this procedure,” warns the body. Those in which it was properly justified, the “supplies” contracts, which include masks, were the ones that predominated, with 70.3% of the total.
Urgency or emergency
During 2021, the OIReScon detected that the volume of emergency contracts “remained high in relation to other years prior to the pandemic” and considered that it is not “reconcilable” with the use that must be made of this mechanism. The pandemic opened the door and the facilities to hire at hand meant that many administrations kept the door open much longer than the regulatory bodies considered necessary.
The administrations have the route of emergency processing, which is the one that the regulatory bodies consider should have been the appropriate one in many cases. This route reduces the deadlines, but maintains prior controls when making the awards. In the event of an emergency, there is no going back when revoking such a contract, because it has already been awarded and many times executed. It is possible to appeal, however, to justice.
2024-02-27 06:30:28
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