An opinion from the AGU (Advocacy-General of the Union) pointed out a lack of justification for the waiver of the bidding process, which resulted in the hiring, by the Ministry of Health, of the company responsible for transporting doses of the vaccine against Covid-19 for children aged 5 to 11 years. .
IBL (Intermodal Brasil Logística), the contracted company, had no experience with transporting vaccines in the SUS.
The first deliveries were marred by problems such as flight delays, lack of staff at airports, disputes over who should transport the immunizers to state warehouses, improper storage conditions and over-freezing of doses.
The AGU document, obtained by the leaf, was prepared by Union lawyers who work in legal advice at the ministry.
In the opinion, the lawyers stated that it was reckless to establish a period of up to five years for the signed contracts, since there was no public competition for the choice of the company.
The legal opinion also questioned the delay in the quantities of Pfizer’s vaccines to be transported and suggested that the composition of the prices practiced should include an analysis of the cost of previous deliveries of the immunizers, made by a second company, VTCLog, with a current contract with the Ministry of Health since 2018.
The ministry started the bidding waiver process on August 3. The execution of the contracts with IBL, in the amount of R$ 62.2 million, only took place almost five months later, on December 22.
Until December 13, the day of the opinion of the legal consultancy with the Ministry of Health, there was no justification for the waiver of bidding, as stated in the document.
“No justification was presented for carrying out the contracting by waiver of bidding, in view of the possibility, at least hypothetical, of carrying out the contracting preceded by the due bidding procedure, which must be remedied”, quotes the opinion.
In view of the note made, the DLOG (Department of Health Logistics) prepared, the next day, a technical note to justify the absence of bidding.
The rite of such a process would be lengthy, requiring the adoption of different procedures and consultation with different bodies, he said. The legislation for purchases in the pandemic guarantees the waiver, according to the DLOG.
The ministry also decided to maintain the term of up to five years for the validity of the contracts, both for storage of doses and for transport. For this, the folder decided to classify the services as continuous.
The contracts, the result of an emergency selection process, provide for a term of 12 months, renewable for up to five years.
“The extension of this contract may be questioned from the economic point of view, because one of the requirements for the extension of continued service is to obtain more advantageous prices and conditions for the administration”, said the Union’s lawyers in the opinion.
The delay in waiving the bidding made the quantities of Pfizer doses to be stored and transported out of date, according to the legal opinion. Even so, these amounts were maintained: 16.6 million vials, or 100 million doses.
The solution proposed by the ministry, in view of the legal opinion and even before the signing of the contract, was to carry out a contractual amendment, “which can be analyzed at the appropriate time”.
The definition of the prices to be practiced, in turn, was based on a survey of the logistics companies interested in the contract. It was the only instrument used by the ministry.
Legal advice with the folder suggested that there be both an analysis of the cost of previous deliveries and an analysis of what went wrong in this contract.
To distribute Covid-19 vaccines, the ministry used a contract signed in 2018 with VTCLog. On the 7th, the company was informed by the contract inspector about the imposition of a fine of R$ 1.47 million due to non-compliance with performance indicators.
The technicians are also considering a second fine, in the amount of R$ 6 million, for lack of “accuracy” in the inventory of health supplies, and a warning for failures in the transport of biological material from a Lacen (Central Public Health Laboratory).
The contract with VTCLog is scheduled for five years, until 2023, with an annual value of R$97 million. Additives were signed, and the portfolio already predicted, in July 2020, that the value would reach R$ 730.2 million.
By July 2021, R$537.3 million had already been paid, with the possibility of reaching R$895 million in 2023, according to the TCU (Union Court of Auditors).
The choice of a new company, without bidding, was for the storage and transport of Pfizer doses at a temperature of -90ºC to -60ºC.
A week after the internal legal opinion, Army General Ridauto Lúcio Fernandes, the ministry’s director of logistics, sent a letter – with the stamp of “urgent”, in red – asking for authorization for the hiring.
The document, dated December 20, was addressed to the Secretary of Health Surveillance, Arnaldo Correia de Medeiros.
The general’s area provided explanations for most of the legal advice’s notes and, on December 21, Fernandes again drafted an “urgent” dispatch, with the word written in red again. In the document, he confirmed the waiver of bidding for the contracting of IBL.
The waiver extract was published in the Federal Official Gazette on the following day, December 22, the same day the two contracts were signed.
In a note, the Ministry of Health stated that the hiring followed the necessary legal procedures and that the signed contracts are in accordance with what the legal opinion advocates.
“All contracts of this ministry are monitored and supervised by teams designated for such.”
IBL offered the lowest price and there was an analysis of the costs of previous deliveries, but “there are no prices for comparison”, as they are vaccine doses to be kept and transported between -90ºC and -60ºC, according to the ministry.
“We used all the parameters of the normative instruction of price research of the Ministry of Economy, to choose the most advantageous proposal for the administration”, he said.
An inspection process, still under analysis, investigates failures in the delivery of pediatric vaccines, according to the ministry.
The IBL stated that the vaccine distribution and packaging services are taking place with high safety standards, which were required in the public call with waiver of bidding.
“We are maintaining, during operations, a considerable contingent of professionals of the highest caliber, ready to ensure that any demands are met. All steps under our responsibility were carried out with excellence, without any damage or risk to the quality of vaccines” , he said.
According to the company, the integrity of the vaccines was not compromised by loss of temperature.
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