“Rīgas satiksme” is confused about "Delna" statement
“Rīgas satiksme” has got itself acquainted with information published by “Delna Society for Transparency" about the procurements organized under the CF project "Development of Riga Tram Infrastructure” and is confused about such action. “Rīgas satiksme” reminds that already on 18 January, the company's Procurement Commission adopted a decision on termination of closed contest “Reconstruction of Riga Tram Infrastructure” and negotiated procedure “On the Delivery of Low-Floor Trams” organized within the framework of the Cohesion Fund project No 4.5.1.1/16/I/002 “Development of Riga Tram Infrastructure” in order to avoid any corruption suspicion in this project.
“Delna Society for Transparency” and its participants attended all procurement commissions and were present at the decision-making. So far, “Delna Society for Transparency” has not informed “Rīgas satiksme” about any illegal actions in the procurements. In addition, no procurement was announced without the consent of the Procurement Monitoring Bureau.
It should be noted that “Delna Society for Transparency” – the leading non-governmental organisation in the field of transparency and anti-corruption in Latvia – being the project supervisor, on the basis of the rights granted to it by the agreement on the project implementation monitoring, was obliged to warn the competent authorities about possible illegal activities in the project implementation as soon as concerns about the unlawful conduct emerged instead of focusing the attention on such actions by giving a public notice only nearly a year after the announcing of the negotiated procedure.
It should also be noted that “Delna Society for Transparency” involved experts in the field of the procurement specification assessment in the low-floor tram procurement. The experts were companies whose main business is related to the designing of heating, ventilation and conditioning systems (SIA “4 bee”) and the expert-examination of buildings and building designs and development of energy efficiency solutions (SIA "CMB"). In addition, it is interesting that according to the publicly available information, the same person acts as the Chairman of the Management Board in both companies (https://cmb.lv/lv/vadiba; http://www.4bee.lv/#komanda-2).
We would like to note that “Rīgas satiksme” considers the information about the possible non-conducting of a detailed assessment of major projects at the level of the European Commission publicly provided by “Delna Society for Transparency” as misleading since experts of JASPERS* participated in the drafting of the entire project documentation but before submission of the project application to the EC it was assessed by independent experts of the EC technical assistance or JASPERS Independent Quality Review, as recommended by the regulation on the EU funds implementation**, and gave a positive opinion on the project.
In addition, we would like to remind that “Delna Society for Transparency” receives EU funding in amount of 356,731.42 EUR for the project implementation monitoring.
More information about „Rīgas satiksme” services, route schedules, types of tickets and other news is available at www.rigassatiksme.lv and also in social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook.
* JASPERS (Joint Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions) is a technical assistance partnership between three partners (European Commission, EIB and EBRD).
** Regulation (EU) No 1303/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 December 2013 laying down common provisions on the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund, the Cohesion Fund, the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund and laying down general provisions on the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund, the Cohesion Fund and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund and repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 1083/2006.
*** Based on the contract concluded between the EC and Transparency International.
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