User talk:Crmoorhead

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	For your valuable effort in Bolivia's articles. Thank you! Jamez42 (talk) 18:58, 7 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! :) Crmoorhead (talk) 20:19, 7 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You are right. The Áñez biography is not the appropriate section for this discussion of the controversy as it had been phrased. But, the fact that the person (Mostajo-Radji) supposedly in charge of handling the pandemic got up and left the country in the middle of it, with the only reasoning that "he has not legal trouble and can leave whenever he wants" is truly remarkable and should be documented somewhere. I moved the old paragraph to the COVID19 in Bolivia pandemic page, but it will probably still need more rewriting. Montenbol (talk) 20:58, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have been living in Bolivia during the whole pandemic and as far as I'm aware he wasn't in charge of handling it. We had daily briefings from the Health Minister (then Anibal Cruz) and much of the policy is determined at the Departmental level by the governors, with some national coordination by the central government. There are certainly people more central than him, such as those involved in purchasing like Fernando Valenzuela. It would indeed be crazy if he was in charge of it and nobody cited him until several weeks into the case and after the Minister for Health was arrested, which occurred a couple of weeks into the scandal. As far as I know, Mostajo is only "Science and Technology Ambassador", but if you have anything more solid on that I would read it. Some details on the respirators company and those involved can be found at the following link. ^[1] Here are other people involved. ^[2] Crmoorhead (talk) 21:29, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

From one of the quoted articles "On April 24, Áñez presented on her social networks the Scientific Advisory Committee (CCA) of the Presidency and the Cabinet of Ministers, on whose payroll included Ambassador Mostajo and other external professionals, whom she said will work ad honorem: Carlos Javier Cuéllar, Cinthya Urquidi Bellota, Verónica Osorio Calderón, René Soria Saucedo, Roberto Torrez Fernández, Juan Saavedra Quintanilla and Miguel Ángel Delgado Koriyama." In Mostajo's statement, quoted also in one of the references "The Scientific Committee does not make purchases, the Scientific Committee advises the President on State strategies. What do I mean when I say state strategy? The quarantine that we have, the closing of borders, the dynamic quarantine, those kinds of decisions.” I don't know that he had any special role as part of that advisory committee and that reasoning seems to make sense. I am skeptical about his involvement with the respirators case, especially as there exists a lot of other suspicious activity from those directly involved in purchasing and business contracts. Doubtless, none of it looks good for Anez, but there are deep-seated problems with corruption in Bolivia with any government that are hardly going to be improved in this chaotic transition period. Crmoorhead (talk) 21:49, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Somehow more information only makes it a more bewildering and confusing scandal. Here's an article that explains the prosecutor's continued interest in Mostajo-Radji ^[3]. In it the prosecutor quotes Mostajo from a televised interview on April 5 showing clear awareness about the shipment, number of respirators and coming from Spain, which contradicts his statements to the investigation claiming ignorance. He might not be directly involved in the kickback scheme, or was duped; but the effort with which he has tried to scrub his tracks (abruptly leaving the country without informing Longaric ^[4], wiggling out of testifying again ^[5], not to mention his cousin's weird scrubbing of his facebook posts ^[6]) is eyebrow-raising. Maybe a cover-up worse than the crime situation.Montenbol (talk) 22:29, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As for any leadership role among the response team, I think you are right. All references to Mostajo-Radji leading the COVID response team are things he has written himself, like this scientific article of his ^[7] or the Wikipedia page about him. The paragraph will be changed accordingly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Montenbol (talk • contribs) 22:44, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I was aware of the scandal for some time, but it's complex and confusing, even by the standards of Bolivian politics. Like a lot of cases, accusations are flying round on both sides on who is to blame and the judiciary is operating at a snail's pace to process anything - not helped further by the pandemic. There are a lot of super-strict procedures to purchase anything with government money, but also lazy bureaucracy, so it's easy to point fingers and cry corruption even for suspicion, especially in this current climate. I honestly have no idea who beyond the three businessmen who discussed pricing are to blame or would even profit from it. There were some details from the Charges d'Affaires to Spain from Bolivia who is charge of business relations between the two countries and his communication with the ministry of health people, but I forget what they were as it happened start of May sometime. I assumed someone had written about the respirators on the Covid in Bolivia page already, but apparently not, and it's good for it to be included. The frustrating thing for me is that Bolivia clearly needed the respirators at the time, but they didn't receive anything because the second half of the payment was stopped and the company didn't give the government access to the software needed to get them operational. Worse than paying more than they had to for the equipment is pouring $2.5 million down the drain for nothing. That's beyond anything wikipedia needs to know though.

I will look at the articles you suggest, thanks. I would say that all of the Scientific Committee would have known about the procurement of respirators in detail as it would be reported to them, but that isn't to say that it's impossible that there was some corruption going on. There are many corruption cases still unresolved from the last decade that are equally confusing, but involving much, much larger sums. Without a doubt, there is corruption going on right now in many places we don't even know about, and involving all political factions. Crmoorhead (talk) 23:20, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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