Ambulance contracts rigged, Pavia Asst CEO Michele Brait arrested for auction disruption. Here are all the charges

An official from the Pavia Social Assistance Company and two administrators from First Aid One are also at home.

PAVIA. Arrested for interruption of the auction of the ambulance contract for medical transport in Oltrepo and Lomellina Michele Brait, general director of the socio-sanitary company of the province of pavia (Asst), which manages the hospitals of Vigevano, Voghera, Mortara, Mede, Casorate Primo, Broni-Stradella, Varzi. The general manager is under house arrest at his home in San Donato Milanese, the searches still continue.

On Thursday morning the Guardia di Finanza de Pavia acted with the first light of dawn four arrests organized by Gip Maria Cristina Lapiand numerous searches and seizures in various geographical areas of the country (Lombardy, Marche, Lazio and Sicily) as part of the investigation into manipulated contracts for ambulance transport services in the province of Pavia. In addition to DG Brait, another official of the Pavia Socio-Sanitary Territorial Authority and two directors of a Pesaro cooperative active in the health sector for the crimes of interruption of auctions and fraud in public supplies ended up under house arrest. The investigations were led by the deputy prosecutor Roberto Valli and coordinated by the assistant attorney Mario venditti.

Under the lens of the Prosecutor’s Office for some time, Asst assigned the medical transport services for Oltrepo and Lomellina entrusted in 2017 to the First aid one, a cooperative company with registered office in Pesaro and operational headquarters in Bollate, in the Milan area. A contract worth 2.3 million euros, which, according to the investigation of the Prosecutor’s Office, would have been marred by irregularities. In essence, the company provided means of transportation to transport patients from one hospital to another in the province or to structures in other provinces or regions.

The cooperative, according to the note from the Guardia di Finanza, after being awarded the contract, “has often not been able to guarantee the service requested from the first months of operation, creating numerous and continuous inefficiencies combined with significant delays and lack of health services.” This is also confirmed by the numerous reports received from the transported patients and the doctors on duty in the aforementioned hospitals, assuming the use of a smaller number of ambulances and self-medication than had been contractually foreseen. “Not only that: no equipped places to protect their vehicles, the ambulances at the end of the shift were parked on public roads and the regular sanitation of the vehicles and the same cleaning of the ambulances at the end of the shift was not carried out. transportation of each patient. Even in the midst of a pandemic: ” The service was carried out – explains the Gdf -, in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, in hygienically precarious conditions and harmful to the health of the patients, ignoring the most elementary health regulations imposed by the anti-Covid-19 legislation “.

How was this possible? On the one hand, the cooperative had submitted to ASST aanomalous offer, “So out of the market – reads the note – to avoid the participation of all the other associations present in the province of Pavia that for years had performed the same service in convection.” The yellow flames have proven that the contract auction basis had been illegally set at a lower threshold than regional rates, causing, in fact, the automatic exclusion of other health workers who could never legally accept such a disadvantageous offer: what was offered did not even cover the costs of the service. The company awarded the contract, on the other hand, had guaranteed a 25% discount on regional rates, indicating the labor costs of its employees below the minimum wages established in the national collective agreement, also forcing workers to work as volunteers .

On the other hand, the note reads, “inexplicably the top management of Asst Pavia, although aware of the evident anomaly of the offer and the illegality of the use of voluntary work, also awarded the contract to the cooperative and, later, in the Ante the numerous contractual infractions already verified during the trial period, the necessary revocation of the award itself was omitted, allowing the successful bidder to obtain an illicit profit ”.