CPC found a cartel in a public procurement for the construction of an overpass in Veliko Tarnovo

The Commission for the Protection of Competition accused three companies of a cartel in participating in a public procurement conducted by the Municipality of Veliko Tarnovo under the operational program “Regions in Growth“ 2014-2020. The tender is for design, construction and author's supervision in the construction of a pedestrian overpass, the CPC press center reports.
Manipulation of public procurement is one of the severe forms of a cartel, as it leads to artificially increasing prices and inefficient spending of serious public funds. Therefore, revealing such violations is among the priorities in the work of the antimonopoly authority. Over the past year, the CPC has investigated six cases of alleged cartels in public procurement - for the supply of hospital food, IT equipment, machinery and equipment for mining and construction, food for kindergartens, schools and social institutions, public procurement with European funding for training, as well as for design and infrastructure construction.
Allegations of a violation have been made against “Scorpion Investstroy“ EOOD, “Planex“ EOOD and “El Stroy Engineering - 2015“ OOD, the latter two companies having participated in the procedure as members of the DZZD “Nadlez - Magistralna“.
The proceedings were initiated upon a signal from the Deputy Minister of Regional Development and Public Works, in his capacity as the Managing Authority for the operational program.
During the proceedings, the CPC established a number of circumstances indicating coordinated actions between the tender participants. Among them are identical authorship and last modification of documents, identity in the technical proposals, including identical errors, complete similarity in the visualizations of the project, identical design team, as well as identical values of pricing elements.
The verification of the metadata showed that the last changes to the documents of both participants were made by the same user. According to the Commission, this circumstance and the other coincidences in the offers are evidence of the exchange of sensitive commercial information.
The CPC found that the price offers of the participants were extremely close to the estimated value of the public procurement and to each other. According to the Commission's analysis, “Scorpion Investstroy“ EOOD submitted a cover offer, which creates a seeming impression of competition, while the offer of DZZD “Nadlez - Magistralna“ is minimally different from it and as close as possible to the estimated value.
Based on all the facts and circumstances collected, the Commission did not establish objective economic or market factors that could explain the identified coincidences and the behavior of the participants.
Within 30 days, the companies have the right to submit written objections to the allegations made, as well as to request to be heard. After that, the Commission will rule on the proceedings.
If a violation is established, the Competition Protection Act provides for a pecuniary sanction in a maximum amount of up to 10% of the total turnover of the relevant enterprise for the previous financial year.