By the time of the statement of the supervising engineer, which was on May 12th, the deadlines for the completion of the construction of the Pocitelj bridge had been broken by 218 days. The selected companies Sinohydro Corporation Limited and Powerchina Roadbridge Group gave a third company (from Bosnia and Herzegovina – BiH) to do the span construction of the Pocitelj bridge. China Gezhouba Group Co. LTD submitted false documentation.
Fokus.ba came into possession of official documentation from the Federation of BiH (FBiH) Motorways about how Chinese companies cheated in the past period during the construction of certain sections of the highway in the territory of the FBiH, that is, during applications for tenders. Specifically, those are the companies Sinohydro Corporation Limited, Powerchina Roadbridge Group Co. and China Gezhouba Group Co. LTD. All of them are already known for corruption scandals, frauds and non-fulfillment of contracts on a global level.
In the past period, the aforementioned companies were selected as contractors for the sections of the Pocitelj – Zvirovici highway (Pocitelj bridge), and were candidates in the tender for the Medakovo – Ozmice sections and the Prenj tunnel.
According to the decisions of the FBiH Motorways from May 16th, two Chinese companies with which a contract was previously signed on the construction of the Pocitelj bridge on the Pocitelj-Zvirovici subsection were disqualified for a period of two years, because they violated the contract.
These are the companies Sinohydro Corporation Limited and Powerchina Roadbridge Group Co. Ltd. These companies were an integral part of the consortium, together with the Azvirt Limited Liability Company from Azerbaijan, with which a contract for the construction of the Pocitelj bridge worth 54,942,837 BAM or 28,114,889 euros (without VAT) was signed in June 2019.
Four years later, as stated in the FBiH Motorways decision, it was established that Sinohydro Corporation Limited and Powerchina Roadbridge Group Co. Ltd flagrantly breached the contract in that the work on the span construction of the bridge was not carried out by them, but by a subcontractor, i.e. the company Hering from Siroki Brijeg, which, it was pointed out, should not have happened under any circumstances.
As explained in the decision, in the special conditions of the signed contract, it is stated that the contractor is prohibited from subcontracting works on the span construction of the bridge, while, on the other hand, the subcontractor can only perform works up to the maximum value of 15 percent of the contract. In this case, it was established, the value of subcontracted works was much higher than the 15 percent.
Namely, on May 10th, Motorways of FBiH contacted the supervising engineer from the company IRD Engineering S.r.l. – Italy, which confirmed that the work on the span construction of the Pocitelj bridge was completely carried out by Hering, and that no approval was issued for such a thing from the investor (Motorways of FBiH).
The director of the company Hering Ladislav Bevanda briefly stated that they have neither direct nor indirect contacts with Motorways of FBiH and that he knows nothing about it.
Also, by the time of the statement of the supervising engineer, which was on May 12th, the deadlines for the completion of the construction of the Pocitelj bridge were blatantly breached in 218 days, since everything, according to the contract, was supposed to be completed on October 6th, 2022, N1 reports.
photo: archive
E.Dz.
