• PROBE: President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that Mexico’s Public Administration Ministry will investigate the government’s purchase of ventilators from a private company owned by the son of the head of Mexico’s electric utility (CFE) but blamed Mexican media for reporting on the issue.
• WEAKEN: ” What is at the bottom of this is an attempt to weaken our government”, said López Obrador, singling out Mexico City’s Reforma newspaper for printing the allegations. “We are not the same. We came here to cleanse the government from corruption, to eradicate corruption”.
• ALLEGATIONS: Last week, Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (MCCI), a civil society anti-corruption watchdog, revealed that León Manuel Bartlett had sold 20 ventilators to Mexico’s social security institute for the equivalent of US 1.2 million, nearly twice the cost from that of other contractors.
• CONTRACTS: Moreover, journalist Carlos Loret de Mola reported Sunday in a column in The Washington Post that the López Obrador administration had awarded a larger set of contracts worth US $6.7 million. Among them was a no-bid US $3.94 million medical equipment contract.
