“They presented me with a million tests, at $ 38, of the good ones and (they arrive) in five days. Give it forward. “
This is how, on more than five occasions, Dr. Segundo Rodríguez Quilichini described his reaction when Adil Rosa, then purchasing supervisor of the Health Department, presented to several members of the task force the proposal of Apex General Contractors to supply the government with rapid tests to detect Covid-19.
Statementing before the Health Commission of the House of Representatives, Rodríguez Quilichini, who is the coordinator of the ‘task force’, insisted that, contrary to what Rosa has testified, he did not “order” the purchase of ‘rapid test kits’ from this Construction company that was never able to bring a single piece of evidence that it had promised.
When the president of the commission, Juan Oscar Morales, reminded him that Juan Maldonado, Apex’s lawyer, had written him a text message on March 22 in which he presented a catalog of products that the company could supply, Rodríguez Quilichini replied that she only forwarded the message to Mabel Cabeza because she was the ‘chief of staff’ at the Health Department.
However, according to the evidence presented by Morales, since March 18, Cabeza had been sent to La Fortaleza, highlighted by the then interim secretary of Health, Concepción Quiñones de Longo.
As reported by La Fortaleza, Cabeza served, until his dismissal on March 30, as “liaison” with the ‘task force’.
Rodríguez Quilichini, however, insisted that Cabeza was in charge, together with Rosa and Mariel Rivera Rivera, another Health employee, of directing the purchasing process during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Morales alluded to a letter from April 16 in which Rodríguez Quilichini affirms that Quiñones de Longo “was aware of all these efforts”, referring to the purchase of products to combat the coronavirus, including the failed purchase from Apex.
Quiñones de Longo resigned on the morning of March 26, the same day that – in the afternoon – the bureaucratic process of the business with the construction company was completed.
Rodríguez Quilichini, at Morales’s insistence, tried to argue that in his letter he did not mean that Quiñones de Longo authorized the transaction with Apex, but that he had been aware of the negotiations that existed to acquire a massive amount of rapid evidence from Covid- 19.
The statement contradicts what Rosa testified last week, who assured that the bidding process that led to the purchase order from Apex was carried out behind the back of Quiñones de Longo.
Text messages were presented at the Cameral Health Commission hearing in which Dr. Juan Salgado, also a member of the ‘task force’, reminds Rosa that any purchase must be authorized by Rodríguez Quilichini or Quiñones de Longo.
“I think that at that time Salgado was not aware of what he was saying,” said Rodríguez Quilichini when asked if Salgado had lied in that message.
Rodríguez Quilichini, likewise, denied that he had received the initial Apex proposal on March 24, despite Morales claiming to have evidence that it had been copied in one of the emails submitted by the company. He also denied that he was aware of an offer from the Globex company to supply 500,000 rapid tests in 10 days, at a cost of $ 10 per unit, or $ 28 less than the Apex proposal.
The doctor, who is also rector of the Medical Sciences Campus of the University of Puerto Rico, insisted that the role of the ‘task force’ had been limited to the provisions of an executive order of March 23, which defines its functions as a body. advisor to the governor and the Department of Health.
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