A document from the technical area of the TCU (Union Court of Auditors), obtained by the sheetpoints out “robust indications” of fraud in bids by the company that provided the Army with the necessary input for the production of chloroquine.
The alleged fraud would have occurred in 26 bids made between 2018 and 2021 – a period that covers the pandemic -, according to the TCU’s technical report of February 3 this year. Of the total, 24 trading sessions took place from 2019 onwards, under the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government.
One of these auctions resulted in the purchase of input for the production of chloroquine by the Chemical Pharmaceutical Laboratory of the Army. The explosion of production occurred from an express desire of Bolsonaro, to fight Covid.
The president, a critic of vaccines, has been betting since the beginning of the pandemic on chloroquine, a drug used to fight malaria and without proven effectiveness for the new disease.
The evidence of fraud was detected by auditors in the course of a process opened at the TCU to investigate suspicion of overpricing in the production of chloroquine by the Army laboratory, the explosion of quantities produced in the pandemic, and Bolsonaro’s direct responsibility in the production.
According to the report produced by the technicians, the company Sulminas Suplementos e Nutrição, contracted by the Army to supply diphosphate salt, participated in bids aimed exclusively at small companies. Evidence gathered by the auditors, however, indicates that the group from the interior of Minas Gerais does not fit into this condition.
“If there has been proven fraud in the bidding process, the court will declare that the fraudulent bidder is unsuitable for participating, for up to five years, in bidding in the federal public administration,” the report stated.
The technical area requested the opening of a separate process to investigate suspected fraud and to hear Sulminas. The decision will be made by the rapporteur minister of the process, Benjamin Zymler, who can submit the issue to the TCU plenary.
In a note, the Sulminas group stated that the bids with the participation of its companies were widely known and public participation and that the values practiced are compatible with those of the market. The company also said that the inputs were delivered in strict compliance with “necessary technical and analytical quality requirements, under the terms specified in the notices”.
“The group is at the disposal of the authorities to provide any clarification that may be necessary.”
According to the group, Sulminas Suplementos is part of the Simples Nacional regime. Sul de Minas Ingredients is not included in the same regime, according to the note.
The TCU auditors pointed out two signs of fraud in bids, at the moment when the first company of the group presents itself to the trading sessions as being small.
One of the partners at Sulminas Suplementos, Marcelo Mazzaro, has a 10% stake in the company. Data extracted from SICAF (Unified Registration System for Suppliers) show that Mazzaro has a 90% stake in a company belonging to the group with a similar name, Sul de Minas Ingredients, according to the TCU document.
The other partner in both companies is Roseana Mazzaro, according to the public records of the Federal Revenue Service.
“It is verified that the first condition for the application of the legal restriction of Complementary Law 123/2006 is met”, quoted the report.
The law is the one that instituted the statute of micro-enterprise and small business. The aforementioned item says that a company whose partner has more than 10% of the capital of another company not covered by the law cannot benefit from differentiated legal treatment.
The companies of the Sulminas group also exceeded the gross revenue limit to be classified as small, according to the TCU report.
Once again, Sicaf data were used. In 2017, revenue was BRL 3.8 million. In 2020, it reached R$ 12.3 million. The limit provided for in the law was BRL 3.6 million until 2017 and BRL 4.8 million from 2018 onwards.
According to the audit, of the 26 bids with suspected fraud, in 15 Sulminas Suplementos was the winner to supply items whose exclusive participation should be small or micro-enterprises.
These 15 bids were made by the Chemical Pharmaceutical Laboratory of the Army, by the Pharmaceutical Laboratory of the Navy and by Farmanguinhos (Instituto de Tecnologia em Pármacos), from Fiocruz (Fundação Oswaldo Cruz).
There are still other auctions, such as one made by the Air Force’s specific acquisitions center.
The Army and Navy did not respond to questions in the report. Fiocruz stated, in a note, that it did not receive the TCU report and that it will provide the court with all necessary clarifications within the deadline.
The Air Force, also in a note, said that it is not part of the process and that the planning for the purchase of pharmaceutical ingredients took place in 2019, before the pandemic.
Data from the federal government’s transparency portal show that Sulminas Suplementos, supplier of the chloroquine input produced by the Army, received R$ 6.1 million from the Union, as of 2019. The Army and Navy laboratories and Farmanguinhos are the contractors.
The second company in the group, Sul de Minas Ingredients, received BRL 9.7 million from the federal government since 2014. Of the total, BRL 6.2 million was paid as of 2019. The contracting parties were the same.
To fulfill a wish of Bolsonaro, the then Minister of Defense, General Fernando Azevedo e Silva, made possible an increase in the production of chloroquine by the Chemical Pharmaceutical Laboratory of the Army.
Resources began to be unlocked within the Force, for this purpose, in March 2020. The Army’s expenses with the project amounted to R$ 1.1 million.
According to the TCU audit, 900 kilograms of diphosphate salt resulted in the production of 3.2 million chloroquine tablets in 2020. The last production of chloroquine 150 mg by the Army laboratory had been in 2017: 265 thousand tablets, from 70 kilograms of inputs, according to the court report.
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