Claudio Savoia
04/23/2021 18:16
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 04/23/2021 6:26 PM
President Alberto Fernández, his former Minister of Health Ginés González García, the current Minister Carla Vizzotti and the pharmaceutical businessman Hugo Sigman were charged with the alleged crime of abuse of authority, embezzlement of public funds and negotiations incompatible with the public function, after a complaint that demanded to investigate the controversial state contract with Sigman for the production of AstraZeneca vaccines in the country.
The case is in the hands of Judge Julián Ercolini and Prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan, in whom the investigation was derived. Judicial sources confirmed to
Clarín
the accusations and that the prosecution requested the raid of the Ministry of Health and the Mabxience laboratory, of Sigman, to obtain the contracts and proof of payment or money transfers made because of that contract. "At this moment, presentation orders are being delivered to comply with the delivery of these documents," they told this newspaper in court on Friday afternoon.
The file began with a complaint filed this week in Comodoro Py by Josefina de Elizalde, on behalf of the "non-party citizen space", Republican Joint Action, for "misappropriation of public funds and non-compliance with the duties of public officials, during the process of negotiation for the acquisition of vaccines against COVID-19, which privileged businessman Hugo Sigman over other bidders.
The complaint is based on the fact that the Ministry of Health admitted having disbursed more than 53 million dollars without having received a single one of the 22,400,000 doses of the committed vaccine.
Republican Joint Action is defined as "a nonpartisan federal space that brings together self-convened Argentine citizens from all over the country and abroad, in defense of the independence of the powers of the State and faithful compliance with the National Constitution", and in his complaint he recalls that “
the government's link with Sigman has been controversial almost since the beginning of the pandemic
. The then minister Ginés González García would have tied his entire strategy to the vaccine produced by his friend, leaving aside other negotiations that could have made things easier. It was only when the AstraZeneca vaccine had problems in the trials that the government came out of the emergency to negotiate with Russia and China ”.
According to the accusation, which was followed by the prosecutor Marijuan, “the negotiations with the Pfizer laboratory were delegated by former Minister González García to
Sonia Tarragona
,
an official who had previously worked for Hugo Sigman, who was also linked to AstraZeneca
.
That is to say, a direct competitor, which could imply a violation of the law of Ethics in the public function ".
Tarragona, who was also denounced, like the Undersecretary of Administrative Health Management, Mauricio Monsalvo, was the general director of the Mundo Sano Foundation, led by Silvia Gold, Sigman's wife and co-founder of Grupo Insud.
"This negotiation would have been met with the corporate voracity of Sigman, who with his ascendancy over the president and the Minister of Health got them to consider it as 'Plan A'", relates the complaint and continues: "That would allow the country 'have priority when accessing' the doses, he estimated, available during the first half of 2021, both statements being rejected by reality itself.
“The statements could be innocuous, if it were not because, although at the time of the complaint, not a single dose of the vaccine produced in Argentina and Mexico has yet arrived, the government of Alberto Fernández has already paid AstraZeneca and Hugo Sigman 60 percent of the contract for 22.4 million vaccines, which represents an outlay of around 54,000,000 US dollars ", he points out and concludes:" All this incomprehensible mismanagement has put the health and economy of all the Argentines in check. "