Georgina Saldierna, Enrique Mendez and Arturo Sanchez
Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, February 21, 2022, p. 6
The expenditure exerted by the federal government to attend to the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 left unclarified resources for more than 3,500 million pesos, according to the audit carried out by the Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF) to the account public that year.
The irregularities detected include the acquisition of 300 ventilators in the Institute of Security and Social Services of State Workers (Issste) for 800 million that were duplicated in accounting and the non-accreditation of the acquisition by the Institute of Health for Well-being ( Insabi) of more than one million KN95 masks for 40 million pesos.
The Insabi had 9 thousand 737 million pesos for the attention of the pandemic, of which 3 thousand 196 were destined to the payment of medical personnel and 6 thousand 541 million to that of suppliers. Of these amounts, the Audit reviewed 8 thousand 552 million and determined that the destination of 2 thousand 561 million must be clarified, for which it promoted 19 administrative sanctioning procedures against various public servants.
The ASF concluded that in general terms the Insabi and the Ministry of Health, among other dependencies, did not comply with the legal provisions on the matter, since excessive payments were detected to medical personnel, payments with funds for the care of the pandemic to personnel classified as not covid
among other inconsistencies.
Insabi, for example, could not prove the receipt of 2,250 fans for which it spent 1,600 million pesos in April 2020, in a contract that was awarded directly.
It was also found that Insabi paid a foreign supplier 920 million pesos for a thousand artificial respirators that were not delivered, while other supplies for 17 million pesos were delivered outside the agreed deadlines.
In a review made to Issste, the ASF found that the institution registered 300 fans for 800 million pesos that were duplicated in accounting, in addition to the fact that it could not verify that it has them under its custody.
In the audits carried out on the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), the ASF found irregularities for more than 100 million pesos, related to the acquisition of medical material and contracting of services.
In addition, in the 2020 report it was reported that of the 3 thousand 946 contracts for 8 thousand 238 million pesos made by the IMSS to acquire hospital material -3 thousand 721 for 7 thousand 513 million-, 92.3 percent were awarded directly based on in the decrees for the care of the health emergency.
