OPINION: City of Bribery and Waste

The City of Health – another City Hospital – should have a third new name, more appropriate, and that reflects much better what it was and what it is now: City of Bribery and Waste. It was during the government of Ricardo Martinelli that the work was awarded to the Spanish company FCC. The original cost of this mega-project – which is paid for with funds from the shaky Social Security Fund (CSS) – was about $ 554 million, but yesterday, the general director of the institution revealed that it will end up costing more than $ 1,040 million, almost double . This work has a dark past, as former FCC executives confessed to the Public Ministry that, in order for it to be awarded, they had to agree to pay a bribe of 9% of the work’s value; and eventually added, according to the whistleblower’s testimony, another $ 12 million, with which the amount to be paid in bribes amounted to about $ 65 million. By the time the whistleblower left FCC in 2013, he said the company had paid $ 15 million in bribes. This is how governments agree to many of the works, with inflated offers, so that corruption can receive its “commission.” And this work, obviously, has not been the exception. –LA PRENSA, Oct. 20