Morelia, Michoacán.- A gleaming 22-person elevator reaches floor three, opens its doors, revealing a concrete wall barring access. Some workers of Ciudad Salud de Morelia, Michoacán, speak of this blunder as a symbol of the millionaire waste of resources that was made to erect this hospital fortress. The experts of the Superior Audit of the Federation (ASF) agree with the employees: they made 11 observation sheets, 16 recommendations and 25 Sanctioning Administrative Responsibility Promotions (PRAS).
However, the entrances to the two new hospitals in Ciudad Salud are monumental: high ceilings, wide corridors, ceramic floors for heavy traffic, almost everything looks majestic and impeccable. It fuels the hope that there would be a before and after in medical care for Michoacans, as then-governor Silvano Aureoles Conejo said in November 2020.
These are the General Hospital and the Children’s Hospital, the largest public work carried out in the previous administration, where more than 3 billion pesos were invested: 2.6 billion federal money and 400 million state resources. The PRD boasted these works as one of the main achievements of his administration. An investigation promoted by the UNESCO Support Program for Journalism in Mexico, in collaboration with MILENIO, reveals that the government of Michoacán carried out allegedly simulated or irregular tenders in various contracts that add up to 1,127 million pesos. The review of the contracts shows that some of the benefited companies are linked to political allies of Governor Silvano Aureoles (2015-2021).
This was the case of GCQ Construcciones, related to Carlos Herrera Tello, former Secretary of Government and former candidate for the Michoacán government, and Samedic, owned by Alexis Nickin Gaxiola, son-in-law of former PRI presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo Pintado, which obtained contracts for 376.4 million pesos and 160 million pesos, respectively. Another favored consortium was the one made up of the alliance Roth’s Engineering and Constructora Tzaulan, which won the largest contract in its history: 430.2 million pesos in an irregular tender that allowed Constructora Erlort y Asociados, owned by the same owners of Roth’s, to compete.
Manuel Leonardo, Luis Erwin and Luz Eugenia Rodríguez Torres. It is the only contract that these companies have won in Michoacán, where ten agreements were approved to obtain an additional 160.1 million pesos and a year and a half more time to deliver the work, without any sanction.
In addition to the alleged tenders, the ASF found multiple irregularities in these two hospitals: payments for works not executed, unjustified agreements, unreported bank interests, among other anomalies, which totaled 751.6 million pesos in observations.
On the other hand, the sum of contracts and agreements of both hospitals give a total of one thousand 842 million pesos for the General Hospital and one thousand 349 million pesos in the Children’s Hospital. The difference between the two was 492.7 million pesos, when the first was built for 250 beds and the second for only 100.
Contracts for allies
As Secretary of Government, Carlos Herrera visited the General Hospital, also known as Civil, on several occasions. In a video from September 2020, he is seen amazed at the capacity of the work.
“I hope not, but if something happens to me, I want to be in the Civil. The truth”. And he was, but as a representative of GCQ Construcciones. The right arm of Aureoles was the legal representative of Quality Construcciones since March 2010.
This company changed its name to GCQ Construcciones in 2016. His power was so broad that he could even sell the company.
Source: Milenio
