Pharmally sucked anything that smelled like money | The Manila Times

IN the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, American journalist Matt Taibbi wrote an article for Rolling Stone magazine. In it, he described what he claimed was the greed-driven role played by a giant investment bank in the crisis. He likened the bank to "a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnels into anything that smelled like money."

In the Philippine context and on a smaller scale, the description of "blood funnels sucking anything that smelled like money" inevitably leads us to Pharmally Pharmaceuticals, an undercapitalized corporation with a spurious general information sheet (GIS) that cornered P11 billion worth of supply contracts at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. More than P40 billion was quietly moved from the Department of Health to the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management in 2020 for pandemic-related supply purchases, and the unqualified Pharmally cornered the biggest single-supply contract. This pandemic-era scam — the biggest in official history — is now known as the Pharmally scam.