Digitalization affair in BiH: Complaints of counterfeit documentation!

According to the documentation that was submitted to the Procurement Review Body of BiH, the decision of the Ministry of Communications and Transport of Bosnia and Herzegovina dating to July 18th, according to which the job of digitalization of public Radio and Television services in our country costing 25.8 million KM (not including VAT) is handed to a group of suppliers Sirius 2010 Banja Luka – Odašiljači i veze (OIV) Zagreb, has a number of big incriminations, Fokus.ba has found out.

The decision on the most favorable supplier has been signed by the Minister of Communications and Transport of BiH Edin Forto, after the Commission for the Public procurement of the equipment for digital transmission and emitting has undertaken this procedure.

Act of HAKOM

The biggest allegation of committed irregularities, which has been written in the appeal of the consortium MIBO Communications Sarajevo – Roaming Networks Sarajevo – Unis Telecommunications Mostar – Flame Data Technologies Romania, claims that one member of the chosen consortium – OIV Zagreb, has submitted counterfeit documents related to the fulfillment of technical and professional requirements.

As it’s stated in the complaint, it has been determined that OIV has given themselves a certificate that states they had fulfilled the requirements, precisely on the building of DVB-T2 network, the project of digitalization in Croatia.

And not only that, as it’s stated in the complaint, OIV has filed a confirmation of the Croatian Regulatory Authority for Network Industries (HAKOM), issued on February 7th this year, that they have successfully completed this job, even though the mentioned Authority can't issue such confirmations given that they only issue confirmations for the frequent spectrum. The complaint states that insight into HAKOM's contracts from the last five years shows that they haven't signed any contract related to acquisitions with OIV.

The Ministry of Communications and Transport of Bosnia and Herzegovina state that they had no reason to doubt the act of HAKOM which they claim has been signed and protocoled properly, which, as the appellant claims, was not even the point of dispute of this part of the offer.

Furthermore, the bigger incriminating claim of the consortium, which was filed with the Procurement Review Body, is related to suspicious actions regarding the reception of documentation of the chosen supplier on a CD.

As the appealing party claims, the record states that both CDs delivered on the last page of both the original and the copy of the second part of the offer were unopened until the day when the complainant was allowed insight into the material. That, as the claim states, means that the signatory organ (the Ministry) didn't even evaluate the offer of the supplier they chose, and they pose the question – according to what the offer of Sirius-OIV was evaluated as the most favorable.

Breaking the law

Additionally, the breaking of article 69 of the Law on Public Procurement of BiH, was seen by the appealing consortium in the fact that the Ministry accepted the offer which was higher than the tender by 53.469 KM. In their answer, the Ministry stated that this amount is not much bigger and that the Council of Ministers of BiH decided on June 16th to increase the total value of the project by 63.000 KM!

However, the appellant in their claim poses the question of what is the “slightly bigger price” based on, and whether the signatory organ bases this on subjective will, rather than the Law on Public Procurement. According to the law, the signatory organ is bound to cancel the procurement if the offer is bigger than the estimated one.

In the section of the appeal about Sirius 2010 Banja Luka, it is pointed out that when it comes to the part about conditions of technical and professional nature, it has been noticed that all the submitted certificates have been issued on the same date, with the same validity period and expiration date, while none of the certificates had a reference number. Additionally, it has been noticed that for all the certificates, the same scope was written, even though they were meant for different services. The complaint claims that the certificates were issued via the “copy-paste” method.

However, these weren't the only claims written in the extensive documentation presented to the Procurement Review Body of BiH, which must make a decision on this case soon. Fokus was presented with a flagrant violation of the procedure of evaluating offers in a way that certain members of the Commission (whose name we will not publish since we haven't gotten their stands) were bringing registers with offers to certain suppliers.

It is also interesting that the Ministry of Communications and Transport of BiH in their plea after the complaints, signed by minister Forto, stated that they were lead in their decision-making “only and exclusively by the interest of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens, primarily citizens of rural parts which have no connection to IPTV and cable TV”, and not the Law on Public Procurement of BiH, which was supposed to be their only guide.

The spokesperson for the Ministry of Communications and Transport of BiH Majda Tatarević in her answer to Fokus said that they do not want to make a public statement until the appeals process is finalized in the Procurement Review Body.

Answering our inquiry, HAKOM states that they gave OIV the confirmation for proper building of DVB-T2 networks, which confirms that they did all their duties professionally and expertly, in accordance with the deadlines, did their work of projecting, building and operating DVB-T2 networks of digital television in Croatia. They state that they did so in accordance with the permission to use the radiofrequency spectrum in the frequency area 470-694 MHz for providing the service of operating electronic communications networks of digital television for multiplexes M1 and M2 in Croatia and L1 on local areas.

– We cannot comment on the possible counterfeiting and false statements because the documentation you are mentioning is not available to us and we are not familiar with the details – HAKOM states.

The stance of SIRIUS

The company Sirius 2010 Banja Luka, which is the leader of the consortium, answered Fokus's inquiry stating that all the certificates guarantee, as they say, the quality and seriousness of “Sirius 2010”, and that these have been submitted in the offer, issued in the prescribed procedure by an accredited body for issuing certificates. These confirm, as they claim, that the set standards include everything a certificate has to include, including, among other things, a reference number according to which it is possible to check the validity of the certificate.

Fokus has sent OIV a number of questions, too. It has been confirmed to us that they have gotten our inquiry, but they haven't sent us answers before the publishing of the story. If they do send answers, we will publish them subsequently.

BiH was supposed to turn off the analog television signal by June 2015 and exchange it with digital signal. Four years earlier, the Council of Ministers of BiH deemed the project of digitalization a “capital project” for BiH. The project has not been realized 12 years later.

From Hadžić to Forto

In the spring of 2014, when the first phase of digitalization started, which was formalized by the Minister of Communications at the time Damir Hadžić. His successor Ismir Jusko in 2016 gave out a test order for digital signal in Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Mostar. In 2017, a tender was published for the second phase of digitalization which was later cancelled. The story continued in 2022 with the publishing of the tender for equipment procurement, the one mentioned in this story.

Fokus.ba has published a report on the changing of a tender after an appeal by one of the prospective suppliers, which was in total the seventh change of this public procurement! Namely, the tender was published for the first time on June 22nd 2022 when Vojin Mitrović was the minister.

The tender was at the Procurement Review Body last year, too. Coincidence or not, as we have published earlier, on the day that the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH confirmed the new members of the Council of Ministers of BiH, including the new Minister of Communications and Transport Edin Forto, on January 25th, in the Ministry of Communications and Transport a decision was signed according to which the tender was changed for the sixth time to change the tender for digitalization equipment.

Practically in the last minutes of his mandate, the decision was signed by the now ex-deputy minister Nedžad Branković.