Brazil’s Prosecutor’s Office calls for criminal investigation into government purchase of Indian vaccine

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) decided to forward to the criminal area part of an investigation surrounding the purchase of the Indian Covaxin vaccine by the Jair Bolsonaro government.

Federal District Prosecutor Luciana Loureiro Oliveira saw evidence of crime in the contracting and pointed to “interests divergent from the public interest.” The price paid for the product, US$15 per dose, was 1,000% higher than estimated by the manufacturer itself 6 months before the purchase.

The contract for the purchase of 20 million Covaxin doses for R$1.6 billion was the target of a civil investigation by the MPF. Given the suspicions that crime may have occurred, Oliveira requested that the case be referred to the 11th Office of the Fight against Crime and Administrative Improbity.

As disclosed by Estadão newspaper on Tuesday, June 22, a secret telegram from the Brazilian embassy in New Delhi in August last year, to which the newspaper had access, said that the immunizer produced by Bharat Biotech was priced at 100 rupees (US$1.34 a dose). In December, another diplomatic statement said that the product manufactured in India “would cost less than a bottle of water.” In February this year, the Ministry of Health paid US$15 per unit – the most expensive of the 6 vaccines purchased to date.

The vaccine purchase order came personally from President Jair Bolsonaro. Negotiations lasted about 3 months, a much shorter time than other deals. In the case of Pfizer, it took almost 11 months, a period during which the price offered did not change (US$10 per dose). Even cheaper than the Indian vaccine, the cost of the American pharmaceutical product was used as an argument by the Bolsonaro government to postpone the contract, which was only closed in March this year.

Unlike other immunizers purchased by the federal government, directly from manufacturers, the purchase of Covaxin was intermediated by a Brazilian company Precisa Medicamentos. The company is the target of the Covid CPI (investigative committee), which lifted the secrecy of one of its partners, Francisco Maximiano. The company has already been a target of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office on charges of fraud in the sale of Covid-19 tests.

In the June 16 order, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office cites the fact that each vaccine dose was purchased for US$15, “a price higher than the negotiation of other vaccines in the international market, such as the Pfizer vaccine.”

“After the 70-day deadline for the phased execution of the contract had expired, none of the 4 million dose batches had been delivered by the contractor Precisa, because the vaccine in question had not obtained, at least until June 5, 2021, emergency authorization from the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA) for import and/or use in Brazil,” the prosecutor reports.

The Covaxin agreement foresaw the supply of 6 million units in March, but conditioned it to approval from ANVISA, which was only granted on June 4. Nevertheless, the health regulator imposed a number of conditions for the government to distribute the vaccine, such as a plan to monitor who receives the doses, which, according to ANVISA, has not yet been presented.

“The omission of corrective attitudes in the execution of the contract, added to the history of irregularities that weighs on the partners of the Precisa company and the high price paid for the contracted doses, compared to the others, leads to a situation that requires in-depth investigation, under two aspects: civil and criminal, as, in principle, the imprudence of the risk assumed by the Ministry of Health with this contracting is not justified, except to meet interests divergent from public interest.”

The prosecutor also mentions in the document that Precisa is a partner of Global Saúde, which “a little over three years ago, entered into a contract to sell drugs to the Ministry of Health. Global is the target of a lawsuit in a court of the Federal District for having received R$20 million from the Ministry to provide medicines that were never delivered.

The deal was made in 2017, when the Ministry was headed by the current government leader in the Chamber, deputy Ricardo Barros (Progressivos-PR), of the Centrão voting bloc. More than three years later, the Ministry says it is still negotiating the reimbursement. The ex-Minister and his staff are also targets of the administrative improbity lawsuit.

In a statement to the Prosecutor’s Office, a Ministry of Health employee points to “abnormal pressures” for the acquisition of Covaxin. The employee reported receiving “text messages, e-mails, phone calls, requests for meetings” outside his office hours, on Saturdays and Sundays. This statement is in the CPI’s possession.

The employee assured that this type of behavior did not occur in relation to other vaccines. The general coordinator of the Ministry of Health’s Acquisition of Strategic Inputs for Health Alex Lial Marinho was pointed out as the person responsible for the pressure.

PRECISA’S COMMENTS

Precisa reports that the negotiations between the company and the Ministry of Health followed all formal procedures and were conducted transparently with the federal agency’s responsible departments. The company is at the disposal of the CPI senators to provide all required clarifications. Precisa is officially unaware of any investigation by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in relation to the contract signed for vaccine imports.

With respect to the value set for the vaccine, Precisa reports that the same price charged for the vaccine in the Brazilian market was charged in 13 other countries that have also adopted Covaxin. The vaccine’s price is established by the manufacturer, in this case Bharat Biotech, which is a market rule. The structure for the production of the viral vector vaccine is larger, and this is reflected in the end cost.

About the final price, the only exception is India itself, where the manufacturer is established. In that country, the price per dose was set at US$2 for the federal government, which anticipated the payment of 100 million doses of Covaxin and invested in the development of clinical trials and the product. For the state governments of India, the dose price was set at US$5.3, and for private hospitals at US$16 (higher than the price set for Brazil).

MINISTRY OF HEALTH’S STATEMENT

The Ministry of Health reports that the matter is being analyzed by the Ministry’s legal counsel and that no payment has been made to the laboratory.

The Ministry of Health clarifies that it maintains a dialogue with all laboratories that produce Covid-19 vaccines available in the market. However, it only distributes immunizers approved by ANVISA to states, which rigorously evaluates the manufacturers’ documentation.

The Ministry reiterates that it respects ANVISA’s autonomy and follows all the regulatory agency’s decisions