Through VOX, COPACO subcontracted a company to provide call center services to Public Health. Flavio “Kike” Santander, brother-in-law of Mario Abdo, is a representative of the company hired by VOX. State-owned Telefónica violated the Procurement Law to do business without bidding with someone close to Abdo. The relative remains with a contract of G. 5,800 million. Even the amount could be higher but the document is kept under lock and key.
Source: By Jorge Torres Romero and Cinthia Mora
By Jorge Torres Romero and Cinthia Mora
At the height of the pandemic in Paraguay, COPACO signed a specific agreement with the Ministry of Public Health for the provision of the Contact Center service. As COPACO is subject to Law 2051 on Public Procurement, it used its telephone company VOX to subcontract (without bidding) the services of a technology firm, which is represented by the musician Flavio “Kike” Santander, who is the brother-in-law of President Mario Abdo Benítez. .
On February 5, 2020, when the country was waiting for the imminent entry of Covid-19 into our territory, an inter-institutional cooperation agreement was agreed between Copaco and the Ministry of Health. Then, a cooperation agreement was signed on October 6, 2020 by the president of Copaco, Sante Vallese, and the then Minister of Health, Julio Mazzoleni, in order to implement a Contact Center service for the Ministry of Health for eight months. Health, which required the tracing of people or contacts who have been exposed to the COVID-19 virus.
As agreed, COPACO was going to provide technical support for hardware and software for its equipment, to prevent Public Health from having to buy a license from a manufacturer. The contract was for an approximate amount of G. 5,852,001,600, of which the Ministry of Health had to give an advance of G. 3,239,376,300. This contract was opened and paid for per service used, from which it can be deduced that the call center service included 100 positions, whose unit cost was G. 7,315,200, giving a sum of G. 731,500,200, an amount that when multiplied for the eight months, gives the total amount of G. 5,852,001,600.
In its clauses it was established that the coordinators were going to be the commercial manager of Copaco, Hernán Franco, and the Technology and Health Surveillance directorates of the Ministry of Health. It also provided for the express confidentiality of this agreement, either before, during or after its execution.
On the other hand, strikingly, months before that agreement between Copaco and Salud, the company VOX signed a direct contract (without a tender) with the company BIZCOM SA It was on March 26, 2020, at the beginning of the sanitary quarantine, that the president of COPACO, Sante Vallese, representing Hola Paraguay SA (VOX), signed a contract with the company BIZCOM SA, of the Colombian musician Flavio “Kike” Santander, for the supply of technological solutions of the Simplifi brand, such as services in the cloud , call center, platform, among others.
Whoever appears as a representative of the company subcontracted by the Paraguayan State is nothing more and nothing less than a relative of the President of the Republic, Mario Abdo Benítez, since he is married to Adriana López Moreira, sister of his wife Silvana.
The contract between COPACO (through VOX) and the music producer close to the presidential family was also open regarding the amounts to be paid for the service. In an annex to the agreement, all prices subject to variation depending on use were set.
In one of its clauses, the agreement with Marito’s brother-in-law establishes that the contract will have an initial duration of 5 renewable years and in another it provides for the confidentiality of the agreement, under the risk that if it were published, civil actions could be taken and penalties.
THE ILLEGAL MOVE OF COPACO
The state telephone company COPACO cannot contract companies directly because it is subject to the Public Procurement Law, which is why it did not see a better way to circumvent controls by using its telecommunications company VOX to subcontract to the private firm BIZCOM.
However, in the same way COPACO and VOX violated the Procurement Law, by ignoring a resolution of the DNCP, which establishes that the contracts made by COPACO SA with Hola Paraguay SA (VOX) must be carried out in accordance with the terms of Law 2051. /2003, that is, through a call for bids and not by direct contract.
What is striking about the outsourcing in favor of Marito’s brother-in-law is that COPACO has experience in providing the same contact center service to other public entities (such as UNA, ANDE, HACIENDA and IPS) and did not need to subcontract another company to provide the service in question. Therefore, one would think that he did not need to sign a contract, in the midst of a pandemic, with a company represented by the brother-in-law of the President of the Republic.
This was not the first time and apparently it will not be the last that the musician “Kike” Santander does business with the State. It is worth remembering that in 2019 he led a delegation of Venezuelan businessmen residing in the United States who met with the Minister of Public Works and Communications (MOPC), Arnoldo Wiens, to whom they expressed their interest in investing in Paraguay in the mining area.
In addition, Santander was recently at the COPACO stand, at the Mariano Roque Alonso Expo, where technological solutions were presented to the visiting public, as reported through their social networks.
In the midst of a pandemic: G. 5,800 million in favor of a company linked to Marito’s brother-in-law by diary today on Scribd
