{"id":27710,"date":"2020-08-19T14:01:40","date_gmt":"2020-08-19T12:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/?p=27710"},"modified":"2021-08-31T21:30:25","modified_gmt":"2021-08-31T19:30:25","slug":"procurement-of-pcr-tests-from-egg-laying-hens-to-a-multimillion-deal-with-the-authorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/procurement-of-pcr-tests-from-egg-laying-hens-to-a-multimillion-deal-with-the-authorities\/","title":{"rendered":"Procurement of PCR Tests: From Egg Laying Hens to a Multimillion Deal with the Authorities"},"content":{"rendered":"

In July this year, the National Health Insurance Fund of the Republic of Serbia<\/em> received from its Sector for Prevention, Logistics and Conduct in Emergency Circumstances requests for urgent procurement.<\/p>

First, on July 10, the Sector requested the procurement of PCR tests and required reagents, and then on July 13 it again requested PCR tests and expendable material for the analysis device.<\/p>

Both procurements were carried out without a prior public call, while the criterion for the awarding of a framework agreement was the most affordable price, reads the documentation published on the Public Procurement Portal.<\/p>

On the same day when it received the requests from its sector, the Health Insurance Fund concluded the agreements. One company submitted bids for reagents in the first and PCR tests in the second procurement, Belgrade-based Second Cycle d.o.o.<\/em>, and so contracts worth around 58 million dinars in total were signed with them for these goods.<\/p>

RFZO changed the figures<\/h2>

On the 21st of August, the National Health Insurance Fund of the Republic of Serbia <\/em>published a revision of the Decision on approving a framework agreement to Second Cycle<\/em> company for the procurement of PCR tests. According to it, the value of that procurement is not around 12 million dinars but 63 million. Thus, the total value of procurement has almost doubled, so instead of 58 million, it amounts to nearly 109 million dinars.<\/p>\r\n

CINS wrote about it HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

Remark: This information was subsequently added to the story.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>

However, the company was not at the address where it was registered at the time of awarding of the agreements, 6 Bra\u0107e Jugovi\u0107a Street.<\/p>

The Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia<\/em> (CINS) journalist went to that address on August 6 and found the company\u2019s previous owner, Lazar \u0110urovi\u0107<\/strong>, there.<\/p>

In December 2017, \u0110urovi\u0107 applied for the position of director of the Anti-Corruption Agency<\/em>, but was not chosen for that spot. As he claims in his CV<\/a>, he spent two years working in the Government\u2019s<\/em> Office for Cooperation with Civil Society<\/em>, and was also a member of the Government\u2019s<\/em> Council for the implementation of the Action Plan for the judiciary in the accession negotiations with the European Union. According to the CV, he worked as an anti-corruption consultant in the Council.<\/p>

As an anti-corruption consultant of the Ministry of Justice<\/em>, he attended meetings of the Task Force for Chapter 23 (judiciary).<\/p>

He had been the owner of Second Cycle from its founding in 2018 to the declaration of the state of emergency in Serbia due to the coronavirus epidemic in March 2020. Then Dragana Zeman<\/strong>, former alderwoman of the Socialist Party of Serbia<\/em> in the Municipality of Mionica<\/em>, became the new owner and director.<\/p>

When asked whether Second Cycle<\/em> was located there, \u0110urovi\u0107 said that he received the mail for the company and \u201cif it says [in the documents] that it is here, then it is here.\u201c He could not even give us the telephone number of the current owner and declined to talk about his reasons for terminating ownership of the company.<\/p>

Apart from receiving its mail, \u0110urovi\u0107 denied any connection with the company and even though he stepped out of it just five months earlier, he told CINS that he had been the owner a long time ago.<\/p>

He said that he hadn\u2019t been the owner, that \u201cit\u2019s different, it doesn\u2019t even matter. The fact that I had connections, that was literally my own business. I have no reason whatsoever to explain anything to you,\u201d he said.<\/p>

\u0110urovi\u0107 went on to say that he could vouch for both himself and for the company that they were doing business \u201cproperly\u201d and told us to address the authorities because they were \u201cobliged to answer us:\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYou can\u2019t expect a private firm to answer you, if the authorities are not answering you. Completely insane.\u201d<\/p>

Five days after our conversation with \u0110urovi\u0107, Second Cycle<\/em> filed a request and changed its address in the Business Registers Agency<\/em>. No one from the company was at the new office at the Mona Plaza<\/em> hotel in Belgrade, but the receptionist confirmed that the company had leased the space.<\/p>

The National Health Insurance Fund of the Republic of Serbia<\/em> did not reply to the questions we had sent them regarding these procurements. CINS has already written<\/a> about the procurement of medical equipment needed during the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>

Nemanja Nenadi\u0107<\/strong> of the Transparency Serbia<\/em> organization says that there are two key issues regarding

Second Cycle\u2019s business deals<\/h2>

This is not the first time this company has taken part in state-organized tenders. According to publicly available data<\/a>, in July 2019 Second Cycle<\/em> was one of the companies with which the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management<\/em> concluded a framework agreement on the procurement of laboratory materials. This year, it sold PCR tests and expendable materials to the City Institute of Public Health<\/em> for the detection of various viral and bacterial infections, which were not used for the novel coronavirus, worth roughly 10 million dinars. The same institution concluded a maintenance contract with the company worth about 500,000 dinars.)<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>these procurements of the Health Insurance Fund. The first is whether there was more than one company that could have done the job and whether just one was invited.<\/p>

\u201cIf they knew there were several companies that could have delivered these goods and the invitation was sent to just one, that would be unconscientious conduct and contrary to the principles and the Public Procurement Law.\u201d<\/p>

From Egg Laying Hens to PCR Tests<\/h2>

Second Cycle<\/em> registered a new Web portal in the Business Registers Agency<\/em> in June. So, instead of the website hensecondcycle.com<\/a> which states that Second Cycle<\/em> is \u201ca team of professionals dedicated in helping your egg farming business become even more profitable,\u201d the new official portal is scc-lab.com<\/a>.<\/p>

\u201cWe are a distributor of biomedical products and provider of consulting services. SCC-Lab is present in Central and Eastern Europe and now we are opening our first subsidiary in Serbia,\u201d reads their new website.<\/p>

CINS tried to get in touch with the company also by calling the number listed in the register. The female employee who answered refused to introduce herself and asked us to address the company by e-mail for anything that might interest us. We did that, however, we have not received an answer to date. When we asked her whether the company was doing business in the area of egg farming, we were briefly told that we must have misread something.<\/p>

However, former company owner Lazar \u0110urovi\u0107 told CINS that the company had two activities which were running in parallel the whole time.<\/p>

\u0110urovi\u0107 told CINS that those were all medical products of some sort, \u201cexcept this is in agriculture and this is for people.\u201d He added that where egg farms were concerned, there was a patent he was not allowed to talk about.<\/p>

In the meantime, CINS contacted six companies from various parts of the world which Second Cycle<\/em> lists on its website as its collaborators, which two Chinese companies \u2013 Sansure Biotech<\/em> and Bioer Technology<\/em>, as well as Canadian TECTA-PDS<\/em> confirmed.<\/p>

We only managed to reach Dragana Zeman at the telephone number listed next to her name on the list of Municipality of Mionica<\/em> aldermen and alderwomen dated to 2015, but declined to talk with the CINS journalist, and told us to address the Health Insurance Fund with any questions we might have.<\/p>

\u201cAs a private company, we really do not give information of any kind,\u201d she said.<\/p>

When asked whether she was still a member of the Socialist Party of Serbia<\/em> and whether she currently occupied any official position, Zeman said the answer was no.<\/p>

Two addresses are mentioned as headquarters on the company\u2019s old website. The address in Belgrade is 6 Bra\u0107e Jugovi\u0107a Street, while the other is the address of an office in Los Angeles. A man who introduced himself as Nemanja Nikoli\u0107<\/strong> answered the phone listed on the old website and said that he no longer worked for the company and could not talk about it because that had been a part of his contract.<\/p>

\u201cIn any case the company deals with laboratory equipment and also dealt with those egg farms, i.e. those are medical products, i.e. veterinary medical products that boost molting in egg laying hens,\u201d Nikoli\u0107 told CINS.<\/p>

Vladimir \u0106uk<\/strong> answered the phone at the number in the United States of America. He said that a guy \u201cwho is very good at sales\u201d connected him with the employees of this company last year and that he (\u0106uk) gave them the phone number and address so that their mail could be delivered there. \u0106uk, who has been living and working in the U.S. for 25 years now, says that the company employees \u201cblew my mind\u201d and he wanted to try and market their product, a chicken feed premix, in the U.S. However, sales failed to take off:<\/p>

\u201cThis was a legitimate attempt here for them to push that product and I told them to put my phone number and all that on the website, so when someone calls for that call to go to me in America, but that never got off the ground.\u201d<\/p>

In his words, he never actually looked into the ownership structure, as he had planned to do so if he \u201cscored a deal\u201d with them.<\/p>

Thank you for reposting CINS articles! When doing so, you need to state that you have taken the story over from the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia, and provide a link to the article you are reposting.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

More information at: cins.rs\/en\/terms-of-use<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Health Insurance Fund of the Republic of Serbia in July concluded agreements with the Second Cycle company worth roughly 58 million dinars (without VAT) for the procurement of coronavirus tests and reagents. This company, which has in the past engaged in the sale of egg production boosters, got a new owner this past March \u2013 former Socialist Party of Serbia alderwoman in Mionica, Dragana Zeman. We were unable to learn more about this deal and the company from either the Health Insurance Fund or the former and current company owners. They were not at the address where the company was registered during the making of the deal, and they changed the address only after CINS journalists went to visit it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1348,"featured_media":27687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1767,1497],"tags":[1766,1888,1657,1886],"class_list":["post-27710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid-19-en","category-news","tag-covid-19-en","tag-national-health-insurance-fund-of-the-republic-of-serbia","tag-public-procurements","tag-second-cycle-en","ciTrackContent"],"acf":[],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/laboratorija-korona.jpg","author_additional":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1348"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27710"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31330,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27710\/revisions\/31330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}