Dutch firm official hits out at finance minister

Simed's senior representative, Ferry Dubbers, has accused Finance Minister John Dalli of taking figures out of context in the controversy over the award of the Lm25 million medical equipment contract to rival Italian firm INSO.

He also accused the minister of making wrong comparisons "hoping to get away with it" because the public were not aware of the actual details of the tendering process.

Until a few days ago, Simed was considered a favourite to be awarded the Lm25 million contract for hospital equipment after a board ruling some months ago.

Mr Dubbers was reacting to Mr Dalli's press conference on New Year's Eve.

Speaking from his office in the Netherlands, Mr Dubbers reaffirmed his belief that the decision to award the contract to INSO could not have been based on either price, quality or consideration of the contracts appeal's board ruling.

"One can only guess what it was based on," he said.

One of the main arguments being put forward by Simed is that INSO should have been disqualified completely following the findings of the public contracts appeals board, which resulted in INSO's original contract being annulled.

Mr Dubbers said the appeals board had, in fact, recommended that the contract be awarded to Simed, provided they make necessary certain clarifications.

He categorically rejected Mr Dalli's statement that Simed had the same opportunity as INSO to make clarifications.

"In the summer of 2002, the director general of contracts made his office, phone and fax available to a large group of INSO specialists for several weeks and made the government pay €30,000 to technical consultant SECTA to come to Malta and assist INSO bring their bid up to an acceptable level of compliance.

"After all these efforts, 218 items were still unevaluated... The appeals board did not rule that these meetings were illegal as such but rather that these were abused to change INSO's tender to bring it to an acceptable level.

"Simed, however, received quite a different treatment. The appeals board ruled Simed should be awarded the tender should a clarification process prove satisfactory. After the appeals board ruling, we expected this to be implemented fairly.

"Despite repeated written questions, FMS refused to be specific as to which areas needed clarification. Instead, we received a very generic reply that the clarifications requested were the issues raised in the various expert's reports. This left us effectively with five working days to find out ourselves what these outstanding matters were and prepare our clarifications. Nevertheless, Simed endeavoured to scrutinise all matters that might need clarification in the three reports.

"On November 18, Simed submitted a comprehensive report with its clarification to the three expert reports: legal, financial and technical. Under normal circumstances, these would not need more than a few days to evaluate. After this, we never received any reply to our clarifications nor any request for further clarification, despite our written request on December 5 as to whether our clarifications submitted were clear and sufficient. Rather than approaching Simed for further clarification, they suddenly decided, on December 26, it was time to act."

Mr Dubbers said that together with its clarifications, Simed also submitted copies of documentation enclosed with its original bid. However, from the confidential board report, it is clear that FMS had not made these documents available to SECTA or, at least, these were not evaluated by SECTA.

"The statements made in their press release of December 29 with respect to Simed's inability to provide sufficient clarifications show that the government did not expect the aforementioned confidential board report to leak out.

"This report proves clearly it was not Simed that had submitted insufficient clarifications. In most cases, it was FMS and their technical expert, SECTA, that did an incomplete job in evaluating Simed's clarifications. Even in cases where more information would be required, this was not sought by FMS as one would have expected."

On whether the issue of the fifth financial protocol with Italy was an issue, Mr Dubbers said the government and its representatives stated repeatedly that the decision to award the contract to a specific company was not a political one.

"Mr Dalli confirmed again during his press conference of December 31 that the hospital is not part of the Italian protocol. However, this does not exclude that the protocol is conditional on the award of the contract to INSO."

Mr Dubbers also accused Mr Dalli of making an attempt to mislead the public when he stated that Simed's offer was €10 million more expensive than INSO's bid.

"Mr Dalli, as well as the director general of contracts, continue to refer to Simed's published bid price of €74,841,305 which is indeed €10 million higher than that of INSO, being €64,746,103. Mr Dalli even uses a lower figure of €63,915,397 in an attempt to stretch the truth even further.

"Both figures are incorrect. Mr Dalli did not even react to my published statement explaining why INSO's bid was €10 million more expensive than Simed's and not cheaper. This is clearly an attempt to mislead the public with regard to the actual situation."

On the compliance to tender specifications and quality of equipment, Mr Dubbers said that also here, Mr Dalli was playing with figures.

"He refers to a level of compliance of 76 per cent for Simed and 90 per cent for INSO. However, this comparison is far from the truth," he said.

INSO's percentage included many changes that the appeals board ruled to be illegal and which, therefore, should not be considered, he said. Many of the changes are also misclassifications.

A fair comparison would therefore be the 53 per cent compliance for INSO stated in the original adjudication report.

"I furthermore refer to the first SECTA report that referred to INSO's tender and noted that 'many of the items were of dubious quality' and the tender was 'poor and technically inferior'," Mr Dubbers said.