Capital.al
In the last days of last year, precisely on December 27, the National Agency for the Information Society announced a huge tender worth 7.7 million euros for the improvement of the State Treasury system. After several complaints from the Advanced Business Solution company of Gerond of Meçes about the criteria set by the AKSHI, the tender was finally held in May of this year.
Two bids were submitted in the competition, the lowest of which was the merger of Advanced Business Solution and Datalog with a value of 5.1 million euros, or a full 2.5 million euros below the limit fund. However, in early June, AKSHI announced the evaluation of the tender. The bid of ABS and Datalog was disqualified with the permanent justification of not meeting the criteria.
AKSHI announced the winner of the tender, the second bid, that of the merger of Communication Progress and Horizon of Ermal Beqiri, which was 6.8 million euros or a full 1.7 million euros more expensive than the bid of the duo ABS and Datalog.
Immediately after the AKSHI announced the winner of the tender, the ABS company of Meça appealed to the Public Procurement Commission, requesting the cancellation of the disqualification and the declaration of its bid as the winner.
Not only that, but in the complaint, ABS denounced to the Procurement Commission that the two companies declared winners by the AKSHI did not meet the tender criteria, even requesting a special investigation into this issue. During this time, a strong battle has been waged in the KPP, even a special hearing session between the parties.
ABS withdraws complaint over 7.7 million euro Treasury tender
But while the matter was still under review by the Public Procurement Commission, two days ago, ABS suddenly submitted a letter to the Commission withdrawing its complaint about the 7.7 million euro tender, even agreeing to pay 40 thousand euros as a complaint fee.
Gerond Meçe spits on himself
The Treasury System tender is not the only tender for which the ABS company has withdrawn its complaint. According to official documents, two days ago, ABS withdrew its complaints from all tenders in the appeal process. Even reaching the point of spitting on itself, as is the flagrant case of the tender for the LIMS system for food safety and veterinary medicine.
Gerond Meçe, Owner of ABS
This tender was announced by the AKSHI a month ago, precisely on July 14. Just 10 days after the tender announcement, ABS appealed it to the Public Procurement Commission, objecting to the criteria set by the AKSHI. Not only that, but in the appeal, Gerond Meçe directly accused the AKSHI of corruption and deliberate narrowing of competition.
"Unfortunately, the history of classified information or security zones or the requirements for CSI, CSP and OSI are a phenomenon that the AKSHI has strongly embraced and uses whenever possible with the aim of narrowing competition as much as possible in every procurement procedure," ABS denounced in the complaint submitted to the KPP just three weeks ago.
But while this issue was also under review, Gerond Meçe suddenly two days ago notified the Public Procurement Commission of his withdrawal from the complaint, not only for this tender, but also for three others.
Smell of dirty market
Until two years ago, ABS was the main contractor of AKSHI, receiving billions of lek in tenders with compromised competitions and even secret procedures. But unexpectedly, in the second half of 2023, the company was deprived of all access to public funds. ABS's place in AKSHI tenders was taken by Ermal Beqiri's Soft & Solution.
Ermal Beqiri, the main contractor of AKSHI
The latter has practically commanded every tender of AKSHI over the last two years, leading to a strong clash between him and Gerond Meçe. In these two years, Gerond Meçe's ABS has appealed almost every tender conducted by AKSHI, which were always won by companies under the control of Ermal Beqiri. The situation became so critical that it led AKSHI to a complete standstill and this year the Agency has not managed to close any procurement procedure.
Linda Karçanaj, Director of AKSHI
But with the developments of the past two days, the situation has been unblocked. Gerond Meçe has withdrawn from any appeal procedure and the big question is what prompted him to spit on himself? A bargain of skutu to divide the big chunk of IT tenders the same way drug traffickers divide their territories or an order from above? Gerond Meçe is the key.
