Saúde held the termination of Sputnik V for 4 months, and BRL 693 million was stopped

Marcelo Queiroga’s management at the Ministry of Health held out for more than four months the termination of the contract signed for the purchase of 10 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.

The contract was one of the legacies of the administration of active-duty Army General Eduardo Pazuello, who was dismissed from the post of minister and sheltered in a trusted post at the Planalto Palace.

The ministry, under Pazuello, issued a pledge of R$ 693.6 million to pay for the doses of the immunizer, which never arrived.

The money was reserved on February 22, 2021, even before the signing of the contract with União Química Farmacêutica, on March 12. The money, which could be used to buy other vaccines, has been stalled ever since.

The Ministry of Health did not respond to the leaf if the BRL 693.6 million pledge was cancelled, what use will the money be made and why there was a wait of more than four months for the cancellation of the Sputnik V purchase agreement.

Documents obtained by leaf, through the LAI (Access to Information Law), show that an opinion from the technical area recommended the termination of the contract on August 3, 2021.

The document bears the signature of the Secretary of Health Surveillance, Arnaldo Correia de Medeiros.

Queiroga’s management only unilaterally terminated the contract on December 14, more than four months later. The act of annulment was published in the DOU (Diário Oficial da União) on December 16.

When the opinion of the Department of Immunization and Communicable Diseases was ready, recommending the termination of the contract, the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government faced accusations of corruption in the purchase of another vaccine, the Indian Covaxin, brokered by Precise Medicamentos.

Covaxin’s contract, for 20 million doses, had a value of R$ 1.6 billion and was one of the main targets of the Covid CPI in the Senate. Faced with irregularities, it was suspended in June and definitively canceled in August.

Both the Covaxin and Sputnik V contracts were negotiated and executed by Army Colonel Elcio Franco Filho, executive secretary of the Ministry of Health and Pazuello’s right-hand man.

After being fired, Franco Filho was also housed in the Planalto Palace.

The CPI approved a final report with a request for punishment of 78 people —Bolsonaro among them— and of two companies, one of which is Precise.

The president is suspected of nine crimes in the pandemic, including malfeasance, for not having carried out the suspicions of irregularities in the Covaxin contract.

In the case of Sputnik V, which had a strong lobby at the center in Congress, the technical area of ​​the Ministry of Health concluded in August that “there is no longer any need to proceed with the execution of the contract, and the most convenient and less burdensome to the public administration, including the search for an amicable solution”.

In October, the Ministry of Health told the leaf that it had submitted to União Química its intention to terminate the contract. But this ended up not happening at that moment, because there was an “argument [da farmacêutica] under review by the ministry”.

A report published on October 17 showed that BRL 2.3 billion for vaccines was on hold, including the reserve for Sputnik V.

The Department of Immunization, with the endorsement of the Secretary of Health Surveillance, pointed to a “noticeable change in the scenario of the perspective of receiving doses”, since the Bolsonaro government had interrupted successive refusals of Pfizer and Janssen vaccines.

The technical area also pointed out risks in complying with conditions determined by Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) for the use of Sputnik V. The agency authorized the entry of the immunizer into the country under very specific conditions, and in limited quantities.

The ministry also stated, in August, that there was “inertia on the part of the representative company in filing any documentation regarding the import of the product”.

The process should be sent to the executive secretariat and to the legal consultancy of the ministry, for the adoption of measures on the contract.

The unilateral termination term was only signed on December 13 by reserve general Ridauto Lucio Fernandes, director of the Ministry’s Logistics Department, and on December 14 by Franklin Barbosa, general coordinator of input acquisitions for the ministry.

Fernandes took office permanently after the resignation of Roberto Ferreira Dias, suspected of charging bribes for the purchase of vaccines against Covid-19.

“The contract is being terminated, unilaterally, for not obtaining authorization for emergency use from Anvisa”, states the termination term.

“Termination does not prevent the application of any penalties incident to the case, as well as the determination of civil and administrative liability, in specific procedures, open for this purpose and preceded by regular adversarial proceedings and ample defense”, cites a clause.

The ministry says that the guarantee given can be used to reimburse fines and indemnities, “only after finalizing the investigation regarding possible sanctions or responsibilities of the contractor”.

Any disputes must be resolved in the Federal Court in Brasília.