The Procurement Review Body of BiH (URŽ) has annulled the controversial procurement of driver’s license forms worth 800,000 KM, which the Agency for Identification Documents, Records and Data Exchange of BiH (IDDEEA) awarded to MUEHLBAUER without any public tender. The contract annulled by URŽ was awarded through a negotiated procedure citing extreme urgency, claiming that the current supplier could not be changed.
Similar situations keep recurring as MUEHLBAUER has been receiving personal document issuance contracts for years without active competition, and due to this case, URŽ has initiated misdemeanor proceedings against IDDEEA’s management.
Ovaj slučaj Transparency Intenational u BiH (TI BIH) još ranije je prijavio Agenciji za javne nabavke BiH koja je nakon provedenog postupka svu dokumentaciju predala Tužilaštvu Bosne i Hercegovine zbog mogućeg postojanja elemenata krivičnog djela. TI BiH je od početka tvrdio da je IDDEEA neopravdano izbjegla raspisivanje tendera i ugovor na ovakav način dodijelila postojećem dobavljaču, jer je imala dovoljno vremena da sprovede nabavku po zakonu. Zato su upitne tvrdnje rukovodstva ove državne agencije da je sve urađeno da građani ne bi ostali bez vozačkih dozvola, a nisu ponuđeni ni dokazi da samo MUEHLBAUER može ispuniti tražene tehničke uslove.
While awaiting the judiciary’s response, French company Thales DIS France SAS has filed a complaint, claiming they can meet the technical specifications for the required driver’s license forms, and that other suppliers in the market can meet these conditions, but negotiations were conducted only with the existing supplier.
URŽ annulled the entire procedure because the contract could not be awarded in this way, as IDDEEA did not initiate the procurement on time and put itself in a situation where personal document shortages could occur. The decision further states that by law, a contract for additional supply quantities through negotiated procedure could only be awarded when the duration of both the basic contract and repeated contracts is not longer than one year. In this case, the contract lasted 10 years, and there was sufficient time to issue a tender. URŽ also emphasizes that IDDEEA had all information available at all times and it should not have happened that the last quantities were withdrawn in December 2021 without resolving procurement for the future period.
URŽ also states that IDDEEA failed to prove that only MUEHLBAUER could meet the technical conditions and did not provide evidence based on market analysis, and that “such an important procedure was approached in an impermissibly simplified and inappropriate manner.” Besides annulling this procurement, URŽ decided to use its legal authority to initiate misdemeanor proceedings against IDDEEA before the competent court.
URŽ se rijetko odlučuje na pokretanje ovakvih postupaka koji mogu dovesti do novčanih kazni za ugovorne organe i odgovorna lica, što pokazuje podatak iz izvještaja o radu ove institucije koja je u 2020. godini pokrenula samo dva prekršajna postupka. Treba istaći i da je nakon prijave koja je proslijeđena Tužilaštvu BiH od strane Agencije za javne nabavke BiH, IDDEEA raspisala otvoreni postupak za nabavku obrazaca ličnih karata i vozačkih dozvola vrijedan 30,8 miliona maraka iako se samo par mjeseci ranije tvrdilo da se ne može promijeniti trenutni dobavljač.
For years, contracts with the existing supplier of personal documents in BiH, MUEHLBAUER, have been concluded through negotiated procedures without active competition. Thus, the contract for passport procurement in March 2017 worth 9.4 million KM was also awarded to this company through a negotiated procedure, and even then it was claimed that citizens would be left without personal documents because URŽ had annulled several open procedures by accepting complaints from dissatisfied bidders. Also, the Audit Office for BiH Institutions previously concluded that over 100 million KM worth of personal document procurement was distributed without conducting a tender.
