SaS Files Criminal Complaint Over €39 Mn PPP Advisory Contract

Bratislava, 25 June (TASR) - The opposition's Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party has filed a criminal complaint over what it says is an overpriced contract awarded by the Transport Ministry for comprehensive advisory services on public-private partnership (PPP) projects worth nearly €39 million excluding VAT, SaS transport expert Peter Bathory announced at a press briefing on Thursday. Bathory said the party had serious doubts about the cost-effectiveness and transparency of the public procurement process. According to the party expert, SaS had obtained analytical documents commissioned by the National Highway Company (NDS) in 2018 for projects included in the scope of the tender. These concern the planned R7 Holice-Lucenec section and the D4 Raca-Zahorska Bystrica section, including the Karpaty tunnel. "In 2018, the NDS commissioned analytical assessments to determine whether these projects were suitable for a PPP model. Those assessments cost €30,000 for the R7 project and €45,000 for the D4 project," Bathory said. SaS wants to know how, and whether, the assessments were used and why similar work is now being tendered again at a cost it says is a thousand times higher. The party argues that the Transport Ministry's tender documentation contains several inconsistencies. In Bathory's view, the estimated number of person-hours is also overstated. He said each contract envisages an average of 30,000 person-hours, equivalent to around 16 years of work for one individual. SaS vice-chair and MP Marian Viskupic stated that, regarding the PPP advisory tender, "if we believed it was intended for a specific beneficiary to make a great deal of money, it would not look any different". He added that advisory services for PPP projects could not reasonably cost a thousand times more than they did eight years ago, even after accounting for inflation. "We are filing a criminal complaint because we want the law enforcement authorities to examine the matter, to assess whether this is how a public contract should be structured, whether this is how procurement should be conducted, and whether taxpayers' money should be handled in this way. We'll leave it to the authorities to evaluate it," Viskupic added. mf/mcs