"Šnečí finta" v praxi

Earlier this week the Anticorruption Endowment (NFPK) warned of an unfair practice pursued by the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS), which we have come to call Snail Trick. It allows officials to choose at will, which complaints they will tackle. The NFPK has analysed public procurement orders where the ÚOHS manifestly played into the hands of selected principals and winning bidders. Some of these contracts could rightly be described, with clear conscience, as dubious if not “doctored”. Here’s just a few of them.

One of the orders where the Snail Trick was used is “Roads II Bohemia, Domažlice – Envelopment”, organized by the Olomouc Region. The winner, Eurovia, got the contract for less than 300 million crowns without VAT. No tender was called and the winner ensued from the legendary institute of lottery. The lottery software used was identical with the one employed in the “Rath Affair” (equipment supplied by Otakar Čmelinský’s company, Ve-Zak). One of the bidders argued that the lottery was intransparent and therefore illegal. His complaint collected dust at ÚOHS for three month without a verdict. Finally the ÚOHS ruled that the lottery was absolutely okay. This bidder filed a suit, the court upheld his arguments and described the order as totally opaque and the ÚOHS illegal. However, the ÚOHS blatantly ignored the court ruling and swept the case under the carpet by means of the Snail Trick. The bidder, who wanted justice, came to grief.

Snail Trick was also used in an inventive way to deal with the order, “Karlovy Vary Health and Safety Centre”, for 42 million CZK without VAT, sponsored by the Karlovy Vary City Hall. Again, the contract went to Eurovia. The specification of the subject of the order was written to suit exactly 100 percent of requirements met by one and only product on the market. Namely containers supplied by the firm Koma Modular, although many producers of entirely comparable products operate on the market. Koma Modular delivered the best part of the order as a subcontractor to the winner, Eurovia. One other contractor argued that the contract was “tailor-made” to suit Eurovia and its subcontractor, Koma Modular. But his complaint was again disposed with by means of the same old Snail Trick…  

The Anticorruption Endowment will release details, in the near future, of other dubious public procurement orders, concealed by ÚOHS chief Petr Rafaj (ČSSD) and his first deputy, Hynek Brom (ODS).

“The analysis of orders we worked at leaves one constantly amazed at the breadth of issues ‘coverable’ by the Snail Trick. These are no small sums by any means. Total value of contracts ignored on the ground of immateriality is 25 billion crowns! It would be interesting to know what percentage of this sum went to private pockets,” notes NFPK Director Karel Škácha.

The Anticorruption Endowment is a fully independent initiative by people radically unprepared to accept a high level of corruption in state administration. One of our goals is to help expose corruption in state administration and support projects exposing corruption.

Contacts: JUDr. Miroslav Cák, NFPK Lawyer, tel.: 734 784 668, email: miroslav.cak@nfpk.cz