LICITING THE ILLICIT. REFLECTIONS ON THE CCSS-FISCHEL AND ICE-ALCATEL CASES

Abstract

Regarding the CCSS-Fischel and ICE-Alcatel skandals, the author reflects on the socio-institutional conditions that may facilitate the corruption in the state buyings of goods and services to the private sector. The article is intended to answer three fundamental questions: Who made the main decisions? How were those decisions made? To whom were they accounted for? It is here concluded that a little group of politicians and high level public officers made the main decisions on the destiny of millionaire contracts, and that they did it with discrecional powers and in an arbitrarity way, avoiding the existing mechanisms of institutional and legal control in Costa Rica.