By Gram Slattery and Ricardo Brito
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – As PATIENTS with COVID-19 flooded Rio de Janeiro’s public fitness formula from early April to last May, Dr. Pedro Archer was discovered making heartbreaking decisions.
People who have trouble breathing want fans, he says, but there are enough for everyone; those with a low chance of recovery were ignored.
“At the time, it was like that,” said Archer, a surgeon at a municipal hospital in Rio de Janeiro, a city of 6. 7 million people anchored in a state of the same name. don’t suffer. In the end, they would die. “
Some of these deaths, according to state and federal prosecutors, may have been prevented, claiming that senior officials here sought to pocket up to R$400 million ($72. 2 million) through bribery schemes that led to inflated state contracts with pandemic allies. The agreements, they said, included three contracts for every 1,000 fans, maximum of whom never came.
Rio State Health Secretary Edmar Santos was arrested on July 10 and charged with corruption in connection with contracts. A Santos attorney did not respond to a request for comment. court documents ready through federal investigators exposing the alleged scams, which were reviewed through Reuters. Now he’s a witness who cooperates with the investigation, according to the documents.
On the other hand, a federal ruling suspended his duties on August 28, and Rio State Governor Wilson Witzel feared he would interfere with the investigations. Witzel also faces prosecution for alleged corruption.
He denied wrong acting in a Reuters. Deputy Governor Claudio Castro, who succeeded Witzel in August, did not respond to a request for comment.
Latin America has been hit hard by the pandemic, with more than 8. 9 million coronavirus cases as of Sept. 24, according to a Reuters tally. Only Brazil registered more than 139,000 deaths from COVID-19, only the United States.
If Rio were a country, its coronavirus-consistent mortality rate would be the worst in the world, according to a Reuters estimate of Johns Hopkins University’s knowledge. More than 10,000 people died by COVID-19 in this city of sea and sand postcard. , and more than 18,000 state-round.
The region’s reaction to the pandemic has been hampered by several factors, experts say, adding poverty and overcrowded urban living conditions. Some leaders, adding Brazil’s right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, have downplayed the severity of the pandemic.
But the virus has been helped by greed.
Like Brazil, researchers from Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru also claimed that the wallet was filled with pandemic-related transplant projects.
In documents detailing the alleged scams in Rio, Brazilian prosecutors describe a number of interdependent criminal companies, in which emergency contracts for masks, coronavirus tests, even hand gel were allegedly manipulated.
Reuters has reviewed a lot of pages of prosecutors’ accusations, many of which are confidential and have not been reported in the past; and interviewed more than a dozen fitness professionals and smart government experts who condemned the opportunism that they said exacerbated the coronavirus anguish in Rio.
“The pandemic has allowed governments to spend significant resources very temporarily, while internal controls have calmed down due to urgency,” said Guilherme France, Director of Studies at Transparency International in Brazil. “This ended up creating the best typhoon for corruption. “
A witzel representative said the suspended governor had tightened internal controls within the Rio state government and added that he had ignored many officials accused of “irregularities” in his tenure.
GHOST HOSPITALS
The pandemic reaction of the state of Rio convened seven cash hospitals to treat patients with COVID-19. State Department of Health officials, known as SES, awarded contracts of R$836 million ($151 million) to a nonprofit fitness organization called IABAS to build the structure, which were scheduled to open until April 30. Only two have been opened so far, one in mid-May and the other in late June, well after the initial momentum of COVID-19.
At the end of July, when the pandemic was planted in Rio, one of those working-class structures, the city of Sao Gonoalo, was dismantled amid the shortage of patients, and all that remains is a giant field, stripped of grass and planted with rubble.
IABAS contracts are part of an alleged bribery fraud led by Mario Peixoto, a local contractor arrested in May for allegedly defrauding the Rio state’s fitness formula. fitness contracts, adding hospital box.
Peixoto’s lawyers said he was innocent and did not participate in the cash hospital agreement. Your trial is ongoing.
Federal prosecutors have not brought charges against IABAS. But in confidential court documents they submitted requesting a sentence authorizing the arrest of more suspects, they said there was “no question” that the winning bid from IABAS was tainted by corruption. Among the irregularities cited via prosecutors: IABAS drafted its winning proposal before SES solicited bids.
IABAS told Reuters that it won hospital contracts by providing the lowest price. He claimed that SES had modified the agreement, slowing down construction. Rio canceled his contract and took control of all allocation sites.
In a Reuters statement, SES questioned the characterization of IABAS’ progress and said that 4 of the seven cash hospitals were far from complete when the state took over.
SES declined to comment on IABAS’ assertion that the Ministry of Health modified the structure agreement. SES said it had stored more than 500 million reais ($90. 3 million) by postponing invoices to IABAS following corruption allegations made through prosecutors. cooperating with the investigation.
MISSING FANS
Prosecutors say rio state government also hastened ventilation contracts to 3 with little or no applicable experience.
According to court documents outing the prosecutors’ findings, Rio awarded a contract worth R$68 million ($12. 3 million) on March 21 to a little-known company, Arc Fontoura, to provide 400 enthusiasts for early delivery. thinks rio’s Ministry of Health has paid an increase of approximately 200% in the market price.
Arc Fontoura had not entered into any contracts with the state in the past, and tax documents indicated that the company’s annual revenue did not exceed 4. 8 million reais ($ 870,000), prosecutors said. a small apartment located in a working class community of the city.
When Rio won out a small group of corporate enthusiasts in late March, hospital staff complained to SES that the machines lacked key components, prosecutors said in court documents summarizing their findings, which is not transparent as of the documents in which the hospital’s physical conditioning staff was located.
Arc Fontoura responded to phone calls or emails and obtained a Reuters at his address.
On 1 April, SES awarded contracts totaling 116 million reais ($20. 9 million) to two other corporations, MHS Produtos e Servicos and A2A Comercio, for the source of three hundred enthusiasts each.
Rio’s prosecutors temporarily learned of irregularities, according to court documents, beginning with the timing of corporate tenders, little-known corporations submitted their proposals less than an hour after the opening of the tender through SES, which was not announced in advance, a sign that corporations had been informed, prosecutors said.
On May 8, the rio state fitness branch publicly said that of the 1,000 fans it had ordered, only 52 had been delivered, all from Arc Fontoura. SES said in early May that it terminated its contract with A2A due to the “company’s inability to deliver” fans. A2A responded to requests for comment.
MHS owner Glauco Guerra has denied wrongdoing and said in an email that his company had been very delighted in offering federal agencies, and claimed that he had submitted his bid a day after the bid was opened, not within hours, as prosecutors had alleged. Guerra claimed that SES had entered his application documents into his PC formula in a way that had led prosecutors to misread the calendar.
He claimed that 97 enthusiasts had been handed over to SES on June 6 and that the firm canceled the contract for the rest. State prosecutors showed in public documents notified through Reuters that 97 MHS-ordered enthusiasts had arrived at a Rio airport in early June.
SES told Reuters in a statement that all contracts signed “during the pandemic are being audited and reviewed,” adding that any irregularities will be sanctioned. The branch declined to comment on MHS’s statement that its tender documents had been misrepresented in the SES system. raising ongoing investigations into the matter.
Archer, the surgeon, says his pleasure in fighting COVID-19 without enough enthusiasts has left him bitter.
At the height of the pandemic in April and May, he said that up to 30 patients under his care were waiting for the machines, many were too volatile to move around and eventually died, he said.
He wondered how many patients may have been saved, how much has corruption killed?
“It’s very difficult to settle for things you know are wrong,” Archer said.
(Report by Gram Slattery in Rio de Janeiro and Ricardo Brito in Brasilia; Additional report via Rodrigo Viga Gaier in Rio de Janeiro; edited through Stephen Eisenhammer and Marla Dickerson)