Even though, according to the Law on Public Procurement, it was obliged to publicize the name of the company that was awarded the job, the criteria based on which it had been picked and the price on the Public Procurement Portal within three days after the date of the decision, this state institution has not done so to date.<\/p>
Ministry <\/em>representatives refused to send us the data, and the Public Procurement Office <\/em>(which manages the Portal) did not say why it had not published that information either. The Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia <\/em>(CINS) reveals that the job estimated at 40 million dinars without VAT (48 million with VAT) was entrusted to a Fiat dealer, Kragujevac-based Nikom Auto.<\/em><\/p> Marina Mijatovi\u0107<\/strong>\u00a0of the Law Scanner <\/em>NGO, specializing in the oversight of public procurement in health care, says that the Ministry of Health <\/em>did not act in line with the Law:<\/p> \u201cNot only was the Decision on awarding the contract not published, but there are also no data on the technical specification. If the majority of documents are missing, we cannot talk about procurement being public either. We can also consider that public procurement unfinished,\u201d says Mijatovi\u0107.<\/p> Lawyer\u00a0Neboj\u0161a Bogdanovi\u0107<\/strong>\u00a0adds that because of that the Ministry <\/em>should be fined between 100,000 and one million dinars, while the responsible person should be handed down a fine of between 30,000 and 80,000 dinars.<\/p> \u201cWhat is odd in this procedure is that due to urgency you carry out the negotiation process without issuing a public invitation in November 2020, but to this day we do not know whether a contract was concluded, with whom it was concluded and what the price of the ambulances was, or if procurement was dropped, which is also unusual,\u201d says Bogdanovi\u0107.<\/p> Nevertheless, the procurement procedure did wrap up and the ambulances arrived \u2013 at one destination at least.<\/p> Zoran Peri\u0161i\u0107<\/strong>, director of the University Clinical Center <\/em>in Ni\u0161, whose jurisdiction includes the COVID-19 hospital in Kru\u0161evac, says that two ambulances arrived at this health care institution.<\/p> \u201cBoth are registered and both are being used\u2026 They were at the opening there. If you look at the photos from the opening ceremony, you will see that there were two Fiat ambulances parked. At the time they had Clinical Center of Serbia <\/em>written on them, that has been taped over and now reads UCC Ni\u0161,\u201d says Peri\u0161i\u0107.<\/p> The remaining eight should be in Batajnica, however we did not get confirmation of that either from the head of this health care institution, Tatjana Ad\u017ei\u0107 Vuki\u0107evi\u0107<\/strong>, or from the Ministry.<\/em><\/p> CINS also tried to check whether procurement of the ambulances cost the planned 40 million dinars.<\/p> The sales manager in charge of Fiat\u2019s commercial vehicles at Nikom Auto, <\/em>Vladimir Novakovi\u0107<\/strong>, says that the company charged about 3.9 million dinars without VAT per vehicle.<\/p> \u201cVehicles with a stronger engine, better equipped, were going, and we gave [them] for a market price. So, on our part, the job was done very well,\u201c he claims.<\/p> He adds that the ambulances were delivered to the Ministry <\/em>in December, before the New Year.<\/p> Installation of equipment for an ambulance is also a part of the job, which, among other things, entailed changing the interior, the floors, lights and sirens, which Ni\u0161-based company Markonis <\/em>did as the subcontractor. A sales specialist at the company, Mladen Kosovi\u0107<\/strong>, says that Markonis <\/em>got about 10,000 euros for the job per vehicle.<\/p> The deal between Nikom Auto <\/em>and the Ministry <\/em>was made on the grounds of the negotiation process, without the issuing of a public invitation, i.e. through \u201cclosed\u201d procurement which is resorted to in cases of great emergency, such as after natural disasters.<\/p> The reason for the urgency in buying the ambulances was the deadline for the construction of the hospitals, the Ministry <\/em>said in the tender documents published on November 11, 2020. These health care institutions were expected to receive their first patients as early as December.<\/p> \u201cGiven that the date of inauguration of the aforementioned COVID-19 hospitals is known, we believe there is an urgent need for procuring ambulances necessary for transporting COVID-19 patients, which is an emergency epidemiological circumstance the contracting authority could not have foreseen in advance,\u201d the Ministry <\/em>said.<\/p> However, according to the Information on launching the procedure, they had the money for the ambulances as early as October 1, i.e. more than a month before the tender was called. In addition, at the time when procurement was announced, the hospitals in Kru\u0161evac and Batajnica had already been under construction for three months.<\/p> \u201cThat is old practice, to file as urgent what is not urgent so as to give the job to the desired, anticipated winner through a less transparent procedure. This absolutely looks like that,\u201d claims the president of the Coalition for Oversight of Public Finances <\/em>and public procurement expert, Dragan Dobra\u0161inovi\u0107<\/strong>.<\/p> The Law Scanner\u2019s <\/em>Marina Mijatovi\u0107 agrees that the urgency was not justified. She says that the available documents show that a more transparent procedure should have been conducted:<\/p> \u201cThe Ministry <\/em>cites urgency because of the deadline planned for the construction of the COVID-19 hospitals. However, this argument is not enough because the information on awarding the contract for the construction of the hospital in Batajnica was published on August 19, 2020, meaning that public procurement of the vehicles could have been initiated immediately. Moreover, the information of the Ministry of Health <\/em>(already at that time) states that the construction of the hospital is slated for completion by December 1, 2020.\u201d<\/p> Dobra\u0161inovi\u0107 explains that such procedures are rarely justifiable. He adds that procuring ambulances in this way completely fits something that has been a trend for the past year \u2013 conducting procurement in the health care sector in a nontransparent manner.<\/p> Mijatovi\u0107 also says that the negotiation process, without the announcement of the public call, leaves more room for malfeasance than an open procedure, while \u201cthe pandemic allows for its broad application.\u201d<\/p> \u201cNovelties in the Law have given contracting authorities the option of not even needing the opinion of the (Public Procurement<\/em>) Office<\/em>, due to extreme urgency, for example where health care is concerned, which additionally opens the way for avoiding transparency and greater corruption (deals between the contracting authorities and the bidders),\u201d says Mijatovi\u0107.<\/p> Thus, in the case of this procurement the public has no access to the data on what is sought in it, i.e. the document which shows the required features of the vehicles and guarantees that the companies can do the job is missing, and only companies invited by the Ministry <\/em>could take part in the tender, without an explanation as to why those particular companies were chosen.<\/p> For years now, Nikom Auto <\/em>has been getting state jobs in public procurement procedures, like procurement of police vans, ambulances, official vehicles, but also vehicle maintenance.<\/p>\r\n Certain characteristics of the required vehicles in several procurement procedures look like they were copied from Fiat\u2019s catalogs, like the ones that can be found on the Nikom Auto <\/em>website.<\/p>\r\n \u201cTPMS (tire pressure monitoring system),\u201d \u201cBrake system: with ABS EBD (electronic brakeforce distribution),\u201d \u201cESC (electronic stability control) with: MSR-ASR Hill holder,\u201d \u201cself-ventilated front brake discs on protective side molding\u201d and \u201con-board computer\u201d are just some of the items state institutions had listed as necessary for the vehicles they purchased from Nikom Auto<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n In 2020 and 2021, Nikom Auto <\/em>procured cars for the Take the Receipt and Win <\/em>raffle, for a sum of over 160 million dinars. In both years, the Serbian Property Directorate <\/em>addressed Nikom Auto <\/em>exclusively, through expedited procedure.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>The companies invited to participate in the procurement procedure were Kragujevac-based Nikom Auto, <\/em>MIT from Novi Sad, Auto-ku\u0107a Kompresor <\/em>from Belgrade (majority owned by MP\u00a0Mladen Gruji\u0107<\/strong><\/a>, as well as Po\u017earevac-based\u00a0Auto Mirkos<\/em>.<\/p> Representatives of Auto Mirkos <\/em>do not remember this procurement, but assume that they requested the documents because not enough details had been publicized.<\/p> \u201cI don\u2019t see that we ever made a bid. Maybe we just requested the documents, the information may have been cursory, that we didn\u2019t know the specification. So we requested [it] and when they sent [it] to us or asked us if we would like to participate, we gave up. We didn\u2019t send a bid or anything. Most tenders end that way anyway. They put some specification where we can\u2019t take part and that\u2019s it,\u201c a representative of the Po\u017earevac company says.<\/p> It wasn\u2019t just ambulances that were urgently procured for the COVID-19 hospitals in Kru\u0161evac and Batajnica. The hospitals themselves were built based on a contract concluded in expedited procedure, without information related to the project itself, the\u00a0Danas<\/em><\/a> daily reported.<\/p> The Ministry of Defense <\/em>on July 24, 2020 invited three construction companies, without clear criteria, to compete for the job. The job went to Belgrade-based\u00a0Termomont<\/em>\u00a0with partner companies\u00a0Teming Electrotechnology<\/em>\u00a0from Ni\u0161 \u2013 which works on electrical installations \u2013 and\u00a0BP Consulting Project <\/em>from Kru\u0161evac, which provides services in the fields of security and workplace safety, protection against fire and environmental protection.<\/p> However, not even the two companies that were \u201celiminated from the race\u201d in the tender, Lazarevac-based Bauwesen <\/em>and Ni\u0161-based Put In\u017eenjering<\/em>, were left without \u201ca piece of the pie.\u201d<\/p> Even though the Law on Public Procurement prohibits a bidder who applied independently for a tender from simultaneously taking part in a joint bid or as a subcontractor, research conducted by CINS shows that the two companies that participated in the tender but did not get the job subsequently became Termomont\u2019s <\/em>subcontractors in the construction of the hospitals.<\/p> Dragan Dobra\u0161inovi\u0107 suspects there is a cartel agreement between these companies:<\/p> \u201cThey practically close the market there, arrange their parts of jobs. One or the other will get it (the job), they probably already know in advance who is going to get it and there is room there for each of them. Each of them gets their share of the job and their share of the income.\u201d<\/p> Termomont <\/em>owner\u00a0Dejan Bur\u010dul<\/strong>\u00a0declined to comment on the cooperation with\u00a0Bauwesen<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Put In\u017eenjering <\/em>because, as he put it, that was something that happened more than a year ago.<\/p> \u201cYou have to talk to the one who conducted public procurement about that, not me. I made the most normal bid, the time was short, and I was working with subcontractors who were capable of completing the works,\u201d said Bur\u010dul.<\/p> It wasn\u2019t just the number of companies building hospitals that increased. The prices did, too.<\/p> The price of construction of the hospital in Batajnica in the course of five months \u201cjumped\u201d from 3.3 billion to 3.9 billion dinars,\u00a0Danas<\/a> reported. The reason for that were \u201cunforeseen circumstances and the need for urgently continuing the works.\u201d For the Kru\u0161evac hospital, the price was raised twice \u2013 from 1.6 billion to 2.3 billion dinars, and in April 2021 to almost 2.5 billion dinars with VAT.<\/p> In the Amendment to the contract, the Ministry <\/em>says that the reason for the last price hike was the urgent reconstruction of the last two floors of the newly built hospital, for the accommodation of medical staff.<\/p> Zoran Peri\u0161i\u0107, in charge of the Kru\u0161evac hospital, was unable to tell us what these changes in construction works entailed, but rather told us to address the Ministry of Defense, <\/em>which does not respond to questions and requests from CINS journalists. Termomont <\/em>owner Dejan Bur\u010dul did the same.<\/p> <\/p>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.cins.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Marina-Mijatovic-576x385.jpeg\")
Unjustifiably urgent procurement<\/h2>
Nikom\u2019s state jobs<\/h2>
COVID-19 hospitals also built urgently \u2013 competitors become partners, while prices rise<\/h2>
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