The development director for the “Intralot” Company, Harris Dotsis, in a
phone conversation for Top Channel raised suspicions about the tender
for the National Lottery License.
Mr. Dotsis explained the reasons why the criteria of the Albanian government are so exclusive and about to bring an already known result.
“First of all, allow me to say that we operate in more than 50 states and most of these countries demand a license for the national lottery same as in Albania. We have national lottery license for countries in Southern Africa, Australia, Malta, etc, but none of these countries have had criteria like the ones in Albania. These criteria disqualify not only us, but all big companies that have international experience in this area. Due to these criteria, I can assure you that this tender will have a very limited competition”, Dotsis declared.
There were strong suspicions also for the price of the license. The Albanian government hasn’t decided the price as one of the competition criteria in the tender, but has placed a fixed one. According to Mr. Dotsis, the government is not trying to benefit from the biggest offer that could come from a wide competition.
“If the authorities would have included the license fee in the tender criteria, the price would increase after the companies would race against each other. The best way for clarifying this, is an example. We just won a tender for the national lottery in Malta. We won it for 39 million EUR. The Albanian government has preset a price of 3.5 million EUR. You can calculate the population of Malta and that of Albania, compare the prices and see what is happening”, declared the Intralot director.
On 15 June 2012, the executive director of this company sent an official letter to Prime Minister Berisha and the Minister of Finances, Ridvan Bode, where he reported the government’s procedure, asking the suspension of the tender and the postponement of the procedure.
“We have received no answer from the government so far, and now it is clear that we will not be part of this tender, same as the other big companies of this area. We are not qualified for the criteria that are set by the government. We asked for the process to be at least temporarily suspended, so that we can have a wide public consultation for reviewing the tender criteria”, Dotsis added.
But how limited will be the number of the companies that will participate in the tender?
“I don’t know how many companies will participate, one or two. What I know is that their number will be very limited, and we are waiting for a specific company to win, because it is the only one that fulfills the criteria”, added Dotsis, without giving the name of the company in question.
Suspicious criteria, all traces lead to one company
The obligatory criteria set by the Albanian government for the tender, is the possession of two certificates.
The first is the lottery certificate of level 4, and the second is the certificate of the security standard check. Both certificates are released by the International Association of Lotteries.
These certifications are owned mainly by national lotteries, which are public companies in part or entirely.
As result, these criteria exclude from the tender all private companies that have experience in the area.
Secondly, due to the public nature, the national lotteries that have these licenses rarely participate in international tenders. This limits the participation significantly.
20 June is the last deadline for handing over the offers.
But in this tender there will be only a small number of companies and according to the Greek competitors, who have been excluded, there will be only two companies, only one of which will fulfill the criteria.
As regards the revenues that will be encased by the state, they will be limited too. What remains to be seen in the tender is if the winner will be a public company of an European country, as warned by the Greek Intralot.
Top Channel
