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The Central Election Commission procured 15 million euro tenders with direct negotiation and without prior announcement of the contract for the 2023 elections.
Kapitali.al researched the contracts awarded by the CEC in function of last year's local elections.
Described as the most expensive elections in the history of Albania, the local government elections last year will also be remembered as one of the most massive cases, where public money was negotiated at the state tables, outside the competition rules, which guarantee integrity of tenders.
According to the contracts published almost a year later in the Public Procurement Bulletin, there were a total of 14 tenders with a total bill of 1 billion 539 million ALL or about 15 million euros, which the CEC procured through direct negotiation. This figure is almost twice as high as what state institutions procured with the same procedure for the pandemic.
beneficiaries
Detailed data shows that the biggest beneficiary of directly negotiated contracts was the Dutch company Smartmatic International. This company benefited from 2 procedures, that of the "Pilot Project for Electronic Voting and Counting" as well as "Logistics and Soft Services" with a total value of 1 billion and 16 million ALL.
But apart from Smartmatic, domestic companies have also benefited from the secret tenders of the CEC. R & T, an Albanian company, won 2 contracts with a total value of 157.7 million ALL with direct negotiation from the CEC, while Farma Net Albania, a company that operates mainly in the field of pharmaceuticals, won 2 contracts worth 115.2 million ALL. Cetis Graphic, Intelisoft and Adel Co were other beneficiaries of the CEC's secret tenders.
Problematic procedure
According to the legislation in force, the procedure with negotiation, without prior announcement, provides that the contracting authority itself selects the economic operators and negotiates the terms of the contract with one or more of them.
However, this type of procedure can only be used in some specific cases, and more specifically, when in response to two consecutive procedures minimal competition has not been ensured, when for reasons related to exclusive rights or copyrights, the contract cannot be executed except by a single economic operator or when due to extreme necessity, caused by events unforeseeable by the contracting authority, the time limit for normal procedures cannot be respected.
It is unclear with which of the above cases the CEC justified the procurement of millions of euros for the purchase of ballot boxes, stamps or simple printing.
Albania has a problematic record with directly negotiated tenders. The Public Procurement Agency's own analyzes have proven that tenders with direct negotiation and without announcements have the highest rate of abuse of public money. Among the concrete cases registered were those procured during the pandemic, including the famous food tender, which the Ministry of Defense awarded to a company registered in North Macedonia, for which SPAK found corruption and brought to trial three officials of the Evaluation Commission of Offers./Capital
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