After follow-up work, the Police captured Francisco Xavier Ochoa Tarira, former technical director of the Teodoro Maldonado Carbo Hospital (HTCM) this Saturday.
About the former official of the Ecuadorian Social Security Institute (IESS) weighing an arrest warrant for investigative purposes, as part of the investigations carried out by the Prosecutor’s Office on alleged irregularities in purchases of medical supplies from that health house.
In the records of the Prosecutor’s Office there is a complaint for organized crime in which Ochoa is identified as a suspect, like Luis Enrique Jairala Zunino.
“They can say what they want, but the story has two versions, this is mine.” Jairala Zunino spoke to this newspaper in May to defend herself from criticism of her management as the 2018 HTMC manager, epicenter of corruption in the IESS in the last decade, even in the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Weeks ago, the Prosecutor’s Office made 37 raids and arrested 17 people for alleged corruption in hospitals and sectional governments. These actions have been carried out as part of the fight against corruption that the Public Ministry undertook after the media denounced public purchases with surcharges and other irregularities, such as the case in which Daniel Salcedo Bonilla is investigated, linked to an alleged network operating in the IESS.
In one of those raids, at the HTMC, the Prosecutor’s Office reported that Jairala Zunino was detained. Then she rectified: “Luis J. was not found at her home and is a fugitive,” she clarified.
Before the fiscal operations, Jairala Zunino already had a “body of lawyers” who, according to what he said, defended him before the General Comptroller of the State and before the Prosecutor General’s Office, which last year initiated an investigation into irregularities in his management in HTMC, a hospital that hires more than $ 150 million each year.
In his period, details Comptroller, millionaire payment agreements were signed (direct and reserved contracts) under a supposed emergency situation in the hospital that never existedhe points out.
The statements of medical chiefs, which appear in the reports, state that by order of Jairala they were forced to request supplies and drugs for a year, when the hospital warehouses were supplied for three and four months, time that allowed public contests.
“Why did I have to make emergency purchases? Because there was nothing, because people were dying. What was bought ?, AIDS drugs, transplants, I did not make furniture payment agreements, “says Jairala, but does not explain why some agreements were given to people and related businesses. Thus, about $ 10.3 million reached a group of suppliers linked to Raúl Peña Triviño, an employee of a private construction company.
“That is in dispute, I cannot answer for now,” said Jairala Zunino, who before being HTMC manager worked at Abel Gilbert Pontón Hospital from 2004 to 2011.
In that last year he coincided with José Antonio Marazita, a former director of that and other hospitals of the Ministry of Health, whose group of related providers has captured 110 contracts for $ 26.3 million from the IESS between 2013 and 2019. He also agreed with Publio Vásquez, an analyst at the Guayaquil hospital in 2011 and who appears with another group of companies that has received 152 contracts for $ 32 million from the IESS. (I)
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