700.000 USD tender, Interior Ministry favored a company

 According to “Shqip”, a recent administrative investigation started by the Procurements Lawyer, an institution specialized in the tenders and consultation for the subjects and administrations discovered an abusive scheme for a private company declared winner. The investigation started after two oil companies complained after participating in the tender “Supplying fuel for heating system”, held by the Interior Ministry on July 6th with a total value of 700.000 USD, in the department of Concentrated Procurements for the Administration. After collecting the facts, the Procurement Lawyer started the investigation on July 18th, the results of which were public by the end of August.

The investigation brought to light the violations made by the Ministry by declaring as winner a private company. The tender of the Interior Ministry, which was held in May, had failed due to the lack of competition. The order of Prime Minister Berisha for concluding the contracts before August 1st has obliged the companies to find a winner for the tender even though there was only one competitor. Two companies that had joined assets for participating in this tender complained at the lawyer with the pretense that their disqualification was unjust.

After collecting the evidence, the contracting authority, the “Interior Ministry”, in its special criteria for the disqualification of the tender documents has asked a verification from the tax authorities for the average yearly revenues for the last two years (2009-2010), which should be in the value of the limit fund that was offered. “If the economic operators will offer special lots, the average income of the last two years must be in the limit fund of the lot, or to the value of the limit funds of the lot offered”, was one of the criteria in this tender. The investigations show that both companies did not fulfill the conditions of the average revenues, as verified by the tax office.

For having a clearer idea, the Procurements Lawyer started reviewing the tender case of all participating companies, which were 11 in total. By their union were created 7 bids. The Lawyer learned by reviewing the documents that all companies, excluding the one that was declared winner by the ministry, did not have all documentation, such as verifications, licenses, taxes, fines. This shows that the ministry had made a just disqualification of the other companies, but it had declared winner the only remaining company, when the procedure should had been cancelled.

The Procurement lawyer declared that in the tender remained only one company and there was no competition. The tender should have been repeated, valued at least with three bids or more.

“The Interior Ministry, during the evaluations of the bids, has violated the Decision of the Council of Ministers Nr.1, dated 10.01.2007, “For the approval of the Rules of Public Procurement”, amended, and Law no. 9643, “For the Public Procurement”, amended, after qualifying companies that do not fulfill the qualifying criteria”, was the conclusion of the Procurements Lawyer, a structure directly depended from the Prime Minister Berisha.

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