• CONTRACTS: Mexico’s Social Security Institute (IMSS) granted this year a series of lab tests and blood bank contracts worth the equivalent of US $601 million to a group of four medical firms under investigation for presumably breaking the country’s antitrust laws.
• NETWORK: The four firms involved -Centrum Promotora Internacional, Instrumentos y Equipos Falcón, Impromed and Hemoser- have been under investigation since 2016 after IMSS authorities themselves reported an alleged conspiracy to manipulate the allocation of lab tests contracts.
• CLARIFICATION: “We are going to ask (the IMSS director) for information about this so that he can clarify”, said Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who arrived in power under an anti-corruption banner back in 2018. He likes to claim that government corruption is no longer allowed.
• RELEVANCE: IMSS is the largest public healthcare agency in Mexico covering salaried workers in the formal private-sector long with their families. The most recent official figures show IMSS had 1,810 hospitals and facilities catering to a total of 58 million beneficiaries.
