Covid shopping. Something here smells

Importantly, much of the spending reported by the Journal, based on information provided by the ministry to Health Committee Chairman Bartosz Arlukowicz, is not at all about the first weeks of the pandemic, when indeed chaos reigned in the global market for medical devices in the broadest sense, and transactions that would not have been justifiable in normal times were possible and even sometimes necessary. No, here we are also talking about the second half of 2020, even the end - when the world, despite successive COVID-19 strikes, in terms of the supply of personal protective equipment, medical devices and apparatuses recovered, prices normalized (even if they were slightly higher than before the pandemic) and - probably most importantly - there was time to carry out purchases in normal procedures.

The topic of covid purchases will not be closed neither by the report of the Supreme Audit Office, nor, still less, by the meeting of the Health Committee (although the work list includes this item as much as possible). All indications are that it is definitely a field for specialized auditors and public finance discipline services. COVID-19 has not invalidated the principle that public money must be spent with the utmost care and in a sensible manner. And reading the subsequent revelations - and this is by no means a press text, but a source cited by the media - one has to doubt whether officials kept this in mind. And while one can look for justification for the decisions that were made in March or even April 2020 - many countries made mistakes in their purchases, many were "nicked" for worthless SIOs or tests, in the following months these extenuating circumstances were simply not there.

In the context of the knowledge we have today - this is not ahistoricism - even worse than four years ago is the battle over the law on impunity for officials that Law and Justice politicians undertook in the summer of 2020. It looks as if they were fully aware of what room for manoeuvre the investigators would - possibly - have when they took the covid decisions made in the pandemic fever under scrutiny. Assurances at the time that when corruption was involved, the law would not work, sound a little ridiculous today, a little - despite everything - funny. In addition to corruption, understood as the proverbial "envelope" for fixing a contract, there is a whole range of situations in which decisions to spend public funds are not optimized. Why? The answer to this question will be - if it becomes a fact, of course - as fascinating as the conundrum that in the era of the pandemic the roll (read, the opportunity to sign a contract with MZ) was carried in the backpack not only by an arms dealer, but also by a perfume dealer.