The logic of corruption revealed by the Pandemic's Parliamentary Inquiry Commission

Abstract

This article sought to examine the applicability of an analytical framework based on the perspectives of New Institutional Economics (NEI), Public Choice Theory (TEP), and the Austrian School of Economics (EA) to explain the economic logic of systemic public corruption, revealed by the Pandemic's Parliamentary Inquiry Commission. Thus, qualitative, exploratory research was carried out, which consisted of content analysis of the Final Report of the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on the Pandemic, to code and analyze the textual evidence extracted from the NEI, TEP, and EA categories. The results showed that there are signs of corruption in cases of sales of medical supplies to the Ministry of Health; diversion of resources in federal hospitals; suspicious vaccine negotiation and purchase schemes and irregularities in the VTCLog logistics operation contract. From the point of view of international relations, in addition to the lack of interest in multilateral solutions, such as the COVAX Facility consortium, created to enable access to vaccines worldwide, whose Brazilian adhesion occurred on the last day and expressing interest in buying only half of the doses to which it would be entitled, there was the creation of difficulties for the purchase of vaccines from traditional laboratories (Pfizer,  Jansen, and Sinovac) of important Brazilian trading partners. At the same time, there were negotiations, always with the presence of intermediaries, of vaccines that until then had no recognized efficacy, such as the Indian Covaxin. Such results gain analytical density based on the contributions of NEI, TEP, and EA, for which textual evidence associated with each of these categories was found.