Construction Contract
A losing bidder for a large construction contract complained to the international donor that the Project’s Bid Evaluation Committees had improperly disqualified it and another firm for trivial and correctable errors in their bid documents, leaving only one remaining bidder, which was awarded the contract.
The investigation confirmed that the two firms had been unfairly disqualified (over the objection of the donor, which strongly urged that their bids be evaluated), and that the winning bidder was a previously unknown one man “briefcase company” without the capacity to do the work. The investigation further revealed that the company had falsely claimed in its bid that it had thousands of employees employed in eight offices world-wide, and that it had successfully performed several prior similar contracts. Not surprisingly, investigators learned that the winning bidder had agreed to pay bribes to several members of the Bid Evaluation Committee in exchange for the contract.