He president shook the henhouse again transition of power with another undue irruption by anticipating that the Directors of the Social Securityof the Cofepris and the Undersecretary of Health who have accompanied him these years, “probably” would ratified in their positions in the next administration. Once again he left no room for the President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum to make the final decision or for her, who is responsible, to make them known. The dawn of Andrés Manuel López Obrador It does not cease to have a worrying hypertext, because that sector, and in particular in the field of medicinesthe scandals in his environment about alleged influence peddling and corruptionhave been constant and loud.
Under his command have been consolidated Two groups that control the medicine marketa business of 150 billion pesos annually in the private sector and 120 billion in the government sector. The groups are in conflict, and both have grown under the protection of the Obradorato, which at the beginning of the administration began the dismantling of the system of distribution and commercialization of medicines arguing that they were breaking with a mechanism of corruptionWhat came out of that crusade was counterproductive.
Mexican companies that stopped hiring began to sell around the world and increased their profits, while the disaster caused by the duo of Raquel Buenrostro, as chief officer of the Secretary of Financeand the former Undersecretary of Health Hugo López-Gatell With its ideological fixations, it caused a shortage that caused deaths, while the new institution that was created for the government to make purchases and distribution, the Institute of Health for Well-being (Insabi), was a failed experiment that forced the government to go out and buy medicines from the world, many of them manufactured by Mexican laboratories from whom they stopped acquiring them, but at a higher price due to all the added costs.
In the chaos of medicines The two large groups that have formed a oligopolyone private and the other close to López Obrador.
The one related to the president is known as the Tabasco Groupwhich according to industry sources, is headed by Alejandro Calderón Alipi, responsible for the consolidated purchase of medicines and equipment at Insabi, and since August head of IMSS-Bienestar, replacing an official with more than 30 years of experience, who did not last a year in office. The connection with Tabasco, revealed last December by Mexicans Against Corruption, was due to the business relationship between Calderón Alipi’s brother, César Mauricio, with Jorge Amílcar Olán Aparicio, an old friend of Andrés López Beltrán, son of the president, and the former Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López Hernández.
López Hernández sponsored the Calderón Alipi family in Arcar, a drug distribution company in Tabasco, where Manuel Velasco, former governor of Chiapas, is allegedly a partner. Velasco placed several members of his administrative team in Social Security, including his former Finance Secretary Manuel Pedrero, advisor to director Zoé Robledo, and Nemesio Ponce, technical coordinator of Indirect Services of the institution, who is related to the bidding process and who operates with Salim Orci, head of the Internal Control Body of the agency, who in turn is associated with Adrián Cervantes, who until this government had been one of the most important distributors of medicines and equipment for the public sector.
This group includes Olán Aparicio, whose business dealings in the sector and his relationships have been detailed by Mario Gutiérrez Vega and Mauricio Rubí in Latinus, revealing recordings where he boasts about his relationship with the president’s children. Another member of this block of beneficiaries is Mario Pacciano, a young businessman who interacted with the Tabasco residents during the pandemic through the company Maremi, quite indiscreet and who boasts of having injected resources into Sheinbaum’s presidential campaign.
The other block in the medicine oligopoly is made up of businessmen who have been in the sector for a long time, such as the Kosmos Group and Darobi, from the Landsmanas family – the future Secretary of Energy, Luz Elena González, worked with Jack Landsmanas, head of the group – who also received contracts to provide food in federal prisons from Sergio Montaño, when he was chief officer of the Public Security Secretariat during the administration of Genaro García Luna. The other with experience is Alexis Nikkin Gaxiola, also an expert in cryptocurrencies and digital finance and one of the partners of Latinus.
In this block of businessmen, the company that stands out as the one with the most contracts during this government is Traxión, headed by Aby Lijstszain, a consolidated transport consortium, which has the MyM and LIPU moving companies, which during Marcelo Ebrard’s government in Mexico City, obtained the contract to provide the mandatory transport service for all primary schools. Traxión, which had no experience in the transport of medicines, bought the logistics expert company Medistik in March 2022, and three months later they obtained their first contract for the distribution of Social Security medicines and all the medicines of the state-owned company Birmex, which produces, imports and markets vaccines.
Before entering the medicine business, Traxión provided logistical support to the government through Gabriel García Hernández, who was the president’s electoral operator. Once in the sector, Traxión had results that raised the eyebrows of many. Last year, it processed and obtained 300 new drug registrations from Cofepris, thereby controlling the supply and sale of medicines in Social Security, when the average time to complete this process is two years and in comparison with PISA, the large Mexican consortium, which does not obtain more than 30 new registrations per year.
ANDThe drug business in this six-year term have a mine-strewn roadsome of which have exploded, but others have not yet, which suggests that scandals in the sector will last for several years.
X: @rivapa
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