AN Italian company that is challenging a French competitor’s success in a tender for the provision of an aviation radar system for Namibia is being accused of corruption and attempted bribery in documents filed with the High Court.
A claim that he and a colleague from the Italian company Selex Sistemi Integrati S.p.A. raised the possibility of paying bribes to win the contract for the provision of a civil aviation radar surveillance system to the Ministry of Works and Transport, is ‘a preposterous suggestion’, Selex’s Vice President for Sales for the Middle East and Africa, Domenico Iovino, states in an affidavit filed with the High Court in which he denies the allegation of bribery or corruption on his firm’s part.Iovino and a colleague, Samir Popatlal, indicated their willingness to pay money to people involved in the tender process to ensure that Selex won the contract, it is claimed in another affidavit filed with the court.In that statement, Ralph Erdtelt, a Director of a Windhoek-based company, Teltech, which also took part in the radar system tender, claims that he had a meeting with Iovino and Popatlal at a hotel in Windhoek on December 3 last year.Iovino and Popatlal ‘reiterated the importance of this project to Selex and made it clear that they were intent on obtaining the tender,’ Erdtelt is stating. ‘To this end, they indicated that they have funds available to be distributed to vital persons in the tender process in order to ensure that the tender would be awarded in their favour. Selex indicated that the amount available for this ‘distribution’ amounted to several hundreds of thousands of Euros. (. . . ) They suggested that I be given these funds to distribute as I saw fit.’According to Erdtelt he declined their invitation. He states that he later informed the Deputy Director of Aviation Administration and Navigation in the Ministry of Works and Transport, Tobias Günzel, of the suggestion that had been made to him. In another affidavit filed with the court, Günzel confirms this.’I deny any attempt at wrongdoing or corruption,’ Iovino has replied in an affidavit in which he responded to the claims being made by Erdtelt.’There was never any discussion, or suggestion, of money being available for distribution to influence anyone. Samir Popatlal did not make any offer to him. I deny that I suggested that we will give him money to distribute as he saw fit. It is a preposterous suggestion,’ Iovino states.He charges in turn that Erdtelt has ‘clear motives’ to side with French company Thales Air Systems, which was awarded the tender for the provision of an aviation radar system to the Ministry of Works and Transport, as Erdtelt’s company would be doing work worth some N$7,8 million on behalf of Thales if the latter carried out the radar system contract.Selex wants the High Court to stop the contract in its tracks while it takes further legal steps in a bid to get the court to overturn the tender award.It is claiming that its tender bid for the provision of radar and surveillance equipment to the Ministry was the lowest of the three companies that were part of the final round of the tender process. The Chairperson of the Tender Board, Ministry of Finance Permanent Secretary Calle Schlettwein, and Günzel from the Ministry of Works are disputing Selex’s claim that its bid was the lowest, or that this would have entitled it to win the tender.According to Iovino, Selex’s tender bid price was the equivalent of N$113,6 million, which he claims was the lowest of the three bids considered by the Tender Board.According to Günzel, though, Selex’s bid price had to be adjusted because the company tendered for the supply of 20 radar units only, instead of the required 25, and it also included Value-Added Tax in its tender price.Adjusted, Selex’s tender price was N$123,8 million, compared to Thales’s tender price of N$142,39 million and a tender of N$122 million from Spanish bidder Indra Sistemas, Günzel has informed the court.The tender price of the three bidders only accounted for 20 per cent of a calculation of a ‘tender index’ which was used to decide which bidder to award the tender to, Schlettwein informed the court. The technical aspects of the bids accounted for 80 per cent of the calculation of the tender index, and it was in this area that Thales’s bid received a better rating than those of Selex and Indra Sistemas, Schlettwein stated. The emphasis in the evaluation was on the technical quality of the tenders, he added.Schlettwein denied that Selex’s bid was the lowest-priced of the three considered by the Tender Board, or that Selex could have had an expectation that its bid would be accepted if its price was the lowest.It was repeatedly brought to Selex’s attention that the Tender Board was not obliged to accept the lowest bid, Schlettwein stated.Referring to the claim about attempted bribery that has surfaced about Selex, Schlettwein charged that this sort of improper behaviour would disqualify Selex from being considered for the tender.The winning tenderer, Thales Air Systems, is part of the Thales group of companies, which is involved in the arms and electronics industries. Subsidiaries of the group also have a chequered history in South Africa, where they are mired in the corruption scandal swirling around the head of African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma, who is accused of having agreed to accept bribes from Thales subsidiaries as part of a deal in which the South African government decided in 1998 to buy new military equipment at a cost of some 30 billion rand.The hearing of an application by Selex for work on the radar contract to be stopped started before Judge Nate Ndauendapo on Thursday last week. It is scheduled to continue today.werner@namibian.com.na
