2. května 2017 | Press Conferences

Šnečí finta

In the early months of 2017 the Anticorruption Endowment (NFPK) has focused on public procurement orders. Within a short time we received a series of complaints suggesting unfair practices at the Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS or Office). Due to inaction on its part, the office, a nominal watchdog of legitimacy of the public procurement process, demonstrably selects contractor complaints it will examine, and those that it will not pay attention to. The NFPK has a name for it: Snail Trick.

By means of this Snail Trick the ÚOHS can and indeed does significantly influence decisions about which contract-related complaints will be examined in due time, and which ones will be “shelved” due to the sluggish pace of work at the office. Such proceedings are sanctioned by a legal loophole, easily comparable with the black hole called the “lottery process”.

The Czech Republic is the only Central European nation with a legal loophole enabling arbitrary action by an authority monitoring the legality of public procurement orders. The Anticorruption Endowment seeks an instant change of legislation that would fill this legal gap.

The Snail Trick in public procurement orders consists in the speed, or rather sluggishness, of the ÚOHS decision process. Unsuccessful bidders can challenge the decision about the winner at an appeals institution, namely the ÚOHS. But this office is fully empowered to mark the winner as annulled and prevent the principal from entering into a contract with him—or at least delay such a contract. The office must issue its ruling within a 60-day legal limit. If this deadline cannot be met, the principal is free to sign a contract with the winner and the ÚOHZ shall dismiss any objections as immaterial. Therefore the unsuccessful bidder’s complaint could be deemed justified and the contract was indeed awarded in breach of the law, but due to the Snail Trick the ÚOHS will declare that the “probe into the legitimacy of the choice of winner is superfluous due to the immaterial nature of the complaint”.

According to our findings, Snail Trick led to the dismissal of several hundred complaints over contracts to the tune of 25 billion CZK.

The Anticorruption Endowment requested a legal opinion by the legislation sponsor, namely the Ministry for Regional Development (MMR). Its deputy minister for public investment, JUDr. Mgr. Vlastimil Fidler, said he does not mind the snail trick legal loophole and the law will not change.

The Anticorruption Endowment (NFPK) has focused on public procurement orders where the contractors complained to the ÚOHS of unlawful practices. The list includes orders where a breach of the law manifestly occurred. The Anticorruption Endowment shall duly publish in-depth information about concrete cases in which the complaining party was “walled in“ by the ÚOHS with the use of the Snail Trick.

“As far as tricks go to get rich quick and bend the law, Czechs are quite a creative people. Pity this creative approach is not geared to creating a good legislative background not only for public procurement,” says Jan Kraus, cofounder and vice chairman of the NFPK Board of Trustees.

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