Rappler Talk: Corruption in the pandemic

The Senate is currently investigating why a foreign-led company, Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation, got P10 billion in pandemic contracts so far when they had so little capital and was incorporated only in 2019.

Moreover, it appears local manufacturers were edged out by the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) in favor of Pharmally, whose chairman is wanted for several financial offenses in Taiwan.

To make sense of these, Rappler’s Lian Buan sits down with governance expert and certified public accountant Michael Canares to discuss procurement, governance, and open data, and unpack the kind of environment that led to the red flags uncovered by the Commission on Audit, and other questionable discoveries. – Rappler.com