Tender pre-arranged to perfection

AKP municipalities continue to bolster the fortunes of the Albayrak Goup, one of the ruling party’s favourite companies. Platform Turizm ve Taşımacılık, the company of Adem Altunsoy, son-in-law of Nuri Albayrak, Deputy CEO of Albayraklar Holding, a regular bidder in Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality tenders in 2016, has won seven tenders opened by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Istanbul Water and Sewage Administration and Istanbul Electric Tram and Funicular Company. The Albayraks’ son-in-law has received some 250 million lira from these tenders. Most recently, in a prearranged tender in Gaziantep, the tender was first cancelled with the ‘prearrangement going awry’ and then the specifications were changed and another of the Albayraks’ companies landed the 100 million lira tender.

The AKP Şahinbey Municipality in Gaziantep opened a tender on 22 November 2016 with the tender registration number of ‘2016-427082’. The object of the tender was ‘The purchase of the service of waste management, refuse collection works and sweeping streets and roads by hand and mechanically throughout Şahinbey sub-province.’ Thirteen days after the tender was conducted, the company named Gün Hilal İnşaat applied to the Public Procurement Authority seeking the cancellation of the said tender. The Public Procurement Authority resolved unanimously for the tender to be cancelled, ruling it to be ‘such that breaches of legislation cannot be rectified through a corrective procedure.’

Şahinbey Municipality now put out the refuse collection works to tender once more on 24 March 2017 with the tender registration number of ‘2017-71204’. It has emerged that precisely at this point important changes were undertaken, including ‘the tender participation conditions and required documents along with the applicable criteria for assessing eligibility.’ Here are the striking changes made for the company that would win that new tender:

* Among the required documents in the first tender were: ‘The Certificate of the Chamber of Commerce and-or Industry or Professional Chamber with which it must by statute be registered, and, where a natural person or juristic person, a document that shows that it is registered with the chamber obtained in the year in which the first announcement or tender date falls at the chamber of commerce and-or industry at which it is registered,’ while these documents were not included in the second tender.

* In the first tender, with specification made in the ‘documents concerning machinery, accessories and other equipment and the capacity report’ for ‘all vehicles’ to be operated under tender, in the second tender a change was undertaken concerning the vehicles to be operated to enable to the tendered works to be performed. With the wording ‘Hydrostatic vacuum road sweeping and washing vehicle with a capacity of 5.5 m³’ contained in the first tender, this value was changed to ‘4.5-5.5’ in the second tender. Also, with ‘One of the road washing and sweeping vehicles with a capacity of 2 m³ required to be a 2015 model or later’ in the first tender, in the second tender the model was lowered by a year and the specification was for a ‘2014 model or later.’

* Alongside these changes, the points that were absent from the first tender and were added to the second tender are noteworthy. The statements ‘Should documentation procedures be conducted through the submission of copies of licences certified by the notary as conforming to the original, the procedure for issuing copies must have been carried out after the announcement or invitation date’ and ‘With consortia, documents concerning machinery, accessories and equipment shall be requested and assessed separately from the partners with regard to each partner’s own portion’ were added to the tender announcement.

Following all these changes, the Albayrak Group company, Yeşil Adamlar Atık Yönetimi ve Taşımacılık Joint-Stock Company, landed the business with a 100,800,000-lira bid.

CHP ASSEMBLY MEMBER UĞUR KALKAN: A difference of this magnitude is MEANINGFUL Şahinbey Municipality CHP Assembly member Uğur Kalkan, saying the difference of this magnitude between the two tenders was ‘meaningful,’ made the following assessment for our newspaper: ‘Putting these two tender announcements side by side, it reminded me of the pre-arranged appointments at universities. Yeşil Adamlar Atık Yönetimi provides service from within the Albayrak Group. When we look at their website, one of their references is stated to be Antep-Şahinbey Municipality. They either did not take the trouble to add the prefix ‘Gazi’ (war veteran) that we earned with our 6,317 fallen or are unaware that we are a ‘Gazi’. I find a difference of this magnitude between the two tenders to be meaningful. Seven months ago, I brought the leaking of the pre-tender estimate of around 57 million of the Mavikent Phase Five tender onto the assembly agenda. Even though an investigation has been launched, no reply has been given to me or the public for seven months. Mayor Mehmet Tahmazoğlu, who harps on about transparency on every platform and constantly tries to butt in to our speeches at assembly sessions, must enlighten us and the public. Otherwise, the word ‘transparency’ will remain just a word. It will do no more than sit where they have written it.’