SLP, Mexico.- A research led by the Special Research Unit (SIU) of South Africa recently revealed that the Payment of 33.4 million Rands (approximately 1.7 million dollars) of the Department of Defense of that country to the Cuban regime for medicines is part of a corruption scheme in the military entity.
The news, spread by the site DNA Cuba From the data offered Wednesday by means The Citizenstates that the purchase of the antiviral drug Alfa 2B Heberon occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic. Research on the event led to unraveling generalized corruption and irregular contracts throughout the South African defense sector.
The National Director of Research of the SIU, Leonard Lekgetho, explained that the department of Defense initially acquired 930 medicine units to use it as immune reinforcement for soldiers during confinement compliance tasks.
However, the investigation showed that the acquisition agreement was signed after the medications had already been delivered. In addition, drugs were not approved by the regulatory authority of health products of South Africa to be imported or used in the country.
The authorities also affirmed that the Department of Defense did not have funds in its budget allocated for the purchase of interferons.
“The Command Council Military of the National Defense Force of South Africa (Sandf), which is the maximum decision -making body of the Department of Defense, approved the acquisition … the unitary price for each viral was $ 15.50, which is equivalent to 257 RANDS per Viral, ”Lekgetho explained and acknowledged that the purchase process had fundamental errors.
First, the Cuba interferon was not obtained through a competitive bidding process. Second, the person responsible for accounting – in this case the Secretary of Defense – had not signed the acquisition.
The National Research Director said the purchase was “unsuccessful and wasteful”, since most of the medications were returned to Cuba after a court order.
“Of the total interferons imported from Cuba, only 15 lots were used, and of which they were used, 10 were used in a patient of a military hospital, and five of them were used by Saphra to do the tests,” said Lekgetho.
In his explanation, he argued that the department did not recover payments made to Cuba by the interferons and since this medicine was not suitable for the purpose for which it was bought, the expense was “useless and wasteful.”
In 2022, the National Defense Force of South Africa (Sandf) reported that it returned to Cuba All “the so -called miraculous drug” that the island sent to that country to combat the coronavirus.
The previous year, the SANDF had spent around 16 million dollars in the importation of the Heberon Alpha R 2B, manufactured by a mixed Biopharmaceutical company Cuban-China, however, that same month the Department of Defense and Military Veterans could not realize of the 970,000 interferon ampoules that had imported from Cuba.
The state -owned Cuban company Tecnoimport had issued Sandf three invoices for the payment of three interferon shipments. However, one of the invoices had been “erroneously” as payment for vocational training services in the framework of the Thusano operation and initially registered as such in the books of the Department of Defense.
In 2014, the Army of South Africa and the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) of Cuba, signed the Thusano project, which has allowed Cuban technicians to repair vehicles of that force with decades of exploitation, and has reported around 100 million dollars in benefits to the regime of Havana.
