In an interview for El Día TV with Huchi Lora and Amelia Deschamps, Yokasta Guzmán, the director of the Procurement Agency, dismissed allegations of corruption in purchases at the Center for Emergency Operations with the explanation that the terms for the contracting were just not clear in many of the procedures..
“Of the cases we saw, there were no clear specifications or evaluation criteria and, therefore, it was a little discretionary,” Guzman said during the interview for El Dia TV. “If there are no clear technical specifications, the contract can be awarded to anyone. I spoke with him [the COE director General Juan Manuel Mendez] and his team and told him that we had reviewed several procedures and that there were no clear technical specifications in many of them,” Guzmán said.
Investigative journalist Edith Febles recently revealed that the Center for Emergency Operations since 2016 had made almost the totality of purchases to five companies. She presented evidence that the companies were interlinked. Febles was not able to explain who the shareholders of these companies were nor was the journalist able to locate the domiciles of the companies that benefited from millions in government contracting. Executives of the companies were not available for interviews by the press.
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El Dia TV
DR1 News
3 June 2020