Purchase of respirators in Bolivia: the Minister of Health arrested for corruption

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Corruption scandal in Bolivia, where an additional cost was found in the purchase of respirators from a Spanish company. This Wednesday, the Minister of Health was arrested, and the investigation is underway. The country has just over 4,000 patients and almost 200 deaths due to Covid-19.

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With our correspondent in La Paz,Alice Campaignolle

$ 28,000 a respirator for a basic model, an emergency model, while Bolivia needs intensive therapy respirators. In all, the Bolivian State therefore spent $ 4.7 million for 170 respirators, bought from a Spanish company, which sells them, $ 10,000 each. This equipment must obviously be transported across the Atlantic, but a journalistic investigation in progress proves that a local importer proposed to send each respirator for 12,500 dollars. Who therefore paid handsomely in this transaction? This is what the police are trying to find out.

Meanwhile Minister of Health Marcelo Navajas, who approved the purchase, was arrested on Wednesday, along with two IDB officials, the Inter-American Development Bank, a credit agency that granted a loan to Bolivia for the purchase of these respirators. The minister was dismissed and the acting president said that the corrupt authorities will have to pay back up to the last penny for what they stole.  

A new corruption scandal in Bolivia , which comes on top of several revelations on, in particular, the use of public goods by those close to the interim president .

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