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Mauricio Filiberti, owner of Transclor and a good relationship with the marriage of candidates, prevailed on the 29th of last month in the economic offer; he is for the operation and maintenance of the Bernal de Aysa aluminum polychloride plant for more than US$127 million; López Murphy made a request for a report that
A tailor-made tender. Francisco Oliveras column.
A tailor-made tender. Francisco Oliveras column.
The subject, the moment and the protagonists in question anticipate a conflict in the middle of the electoral campaign: Transclor, a company owned by Mauricio Filiberti, one of the businessmen closest to Sergio Massa, has just been left as the only bidder in a tender to exploit, maintain and supplying an Aysa plant with aluminum polychloride, the state-owned plant run by Malena Galmarini, a candidate for mayor of Tigre and married to the Minister of Economy.
The contract, which will be made for more than 127 million dollars at least until 2026 and extendable until 2029, is already the subject of opposition report requests.
The opening of the envelopes took place two weeks ago and once again drew the attention of congressman Ricardo López Murphy, from Republicanos, who is considering filing a complaint, and auditor Juan José Calandri, from the Civic Coalition, the same ones who had questioned it four months ago. , the contest was not well known.
Aluminum polychloride is a coagulant used to make water drinkable and whose manufacture is led in Argentina by Transclor, the companys historical supplier and only seconded in the production of this input by Petroquímica Río Tercero, which this time did not appear. What López Murphy and Calandri object to is the exhaustive nature of the tender text, which summons manufacturers of "aluminum polychloride" instead of consigning "coagulant", a generic that would have allowed aluminum sulfate producers to also participate. , another of the substances used to make it drinkable. This group also includes the contractors Meranol, Faisán and Arquimia.
"I already sent a request for a report," López Murphy, who had discussed the issue on Twitter with Galmarini when the first tender was made, the technique, told this newspaper. “We are going to investigate the spurious maneuvers of Minister Sergio Tomás Massa. We will promote a request for reports from the National Congress so that it can explain to us the scandalous use of public funds in favor of its friends and associates”, he published on the Internet on March 16, and the message then earned him a public invitation from the president of Aysa to know the details of the contest in the offices of the company. The deputy accepted at first, but later conditioned his visit to the cancellation of the tender, something that Galmarini did not do, so there was no meeting then either.
Transclor had already won the technical certification in April and prevailed on the 29th of last month in the economic one, in which it was left alone because the other applicant, Productos y Procesos Ecológicos (PPE Argentina), did not meet the requirements. PPE belongs to the businessman Antonio Reig, owner in turn of the Ferroclor firm, to which Filiberti provides another input, ferric chloride. They are all old acquaintances in the business.
Consulted Aysa sources, they confirmed that at the moment "there was only opening of envelopes" and that the operation had not yet been awarded. "Now the case is being studied and the requirements of the legal and commercial area must be met," they said.
At its plants in Bernal, Tigre and Capital Federal, Aysa currently uses 78% polychloride and 22% aluminum sulfate to make it drinkable, but in the sector there are those who affirm that this proportion is arbitrary, that it favors Filiberti and that even makes the operation more expensive up to 30%. Filiberti denies it. This is a debate that involves millions of dollars and that had several stages. Before being nationalized, when it was controlled by the French group Suez and was called Aguas Argentinas, the company used sulfate to drink. It switched to polychloride in 2009, three years after Néstor Kirchner removed the concessionaire, a change that the then government justified in a technical report that the Suez group had made in 2002 and in the high international cost that sulfate had at that time.
It was a modification celebrated by Filiberti, who at that time manufactured hydrochloric acid, one of the inputs for polychloride. By nationalizing it, Kirchner left the operation and 10% of the property to the Greater Buenos Aires Union of Sanitation Works Workers, which is still run by José Luis Lingeri, the leader who made the decision to summon Transclor as supplier and operator of the plant from Bernal. That is why Filiberti became a powerful contractor over the years.
Consulted, the businessman defends his participation and his contracts. He says that aluminum sulphate is used less and less and that the complaints come from the lobby of the sulphate producers who, moreover, already won a tender in September of last year. But the campaign and the protagonists mean that the discussion is not only technical: there is a million-dollar tender at stake that could condition the supply of the state company until 2029 and the least that is required is that it be successful, since we are talking about water, which as transparent as possible.
Francisco Olivera
THE NATION
Source: The Nation |
