The Office for the Audit of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)Institutions warned that BiH could pay 28 million BAM for the procurement of identity cards that were contracted but not used.
In the Report on the procurement and functionality of personal documents, it is stated that there is a risk of interpretation of one provision of the contract from ten years ago, which the Agency for Identification Documents, Registers and Data Exchange (IDDEEA) of BiH connected with the company Muehlbauer.
The contract defined that BiH will acquire 5,000,000 identity cards and 2,000,000 driver’s licenses, but in the past period only 65% of identity cards were used, while the last contracted quantities of driver’s licenses were withdrawn at the end of last year.
As the ten-year contract expires next year, there is a danger that BiH will have to pay for 1.7 million identity cards that have not been used, because in the report, the auditors explain that Article 3 of the contract provides for the payment of the total contracted amount of identity documents, so that after the end of the contract there is risk regarding the interpretation of the said provision, writes Transparentno.ba.
In the announcement of the Audit Office, it is stated that there is a risk of paying 28 million BAM for the unrealized 1.5 million ID cards because IDDEEA did not resolve with the supplier the issue of ending the existing contract from the aspect of the contractual obligation to purchase total quantities.
In 2015, the Audit Office warned that this could happen and that the trends are such that a significantly smaller amount of identity cards are delivered than contracted, and the Ministry of Civil Affairs of BiH formed a Working Group to analyze the harmful consequences of this contract, but in the end nothing is resolved.
“Transparency International (TI) BIH has been warning for years that IDDEEA favors the company MUEHLBAUER, to which it awards contracts without public bidding. Thus, in March 2017, the contract for the procurement of passports worth 9.4 million BAM was also awarded to this company through a negotiation process, and even then it was claimed that the citizens remain without personal documents because the Office for Complaints canceled several open procedures by accepting complaints from dissatisfied bidders,” the text states.
The Office for the Audit of BiH Institutions concluded that over 100 million BAM was allocated for the procurement of personal documents without a tender, which led to investigations and the former director of the IDDEEA being arrested, but the proceedings were later suspended, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
