On April 29 of last year, the National Information Society Agency opened a tender worth 7.7 million euros with the object of "Maintenance of the Billing Control Management Module for the General Directorate of Taxes." Simply put, this is the maintenance of the fiscalization system and server that makes it possible to issue invoices by businesses.
But 10 days after the announcement, the tender was appealed to the Public Procurement Commission by a company called CSP shpk. In the appeal, the company attacked the criteria set by the AKSHI, asking the Public Procurement Commission to modify them.
It took the KPP two months to come up with a decision. On July 1 last year, the supreme tender body partially accepted the complaint of the company CSP shpk and ordered the AKSHI to modify the tender documents. In point 3 of the decision, the KPP ordered the AKSHI to notify the Public Procurement Commission within 5 days about the implementation of the decision. But what happened next?
The ANA responded to the KPP on July 15th regarding the implementation of the decision, but the General Directorate of Taxes kept the procedure frozen for a full 5 months and responded regarding the implementation of the KPP decision only on November 18th. The reasons why the Taxes blocked the tender for 5 months remain a mystery.
The decision of the Public Procurement Commission showing that the Taxes blocked the tender for 5 months
But after the response was returned, on December 4, the KPP decided to unblock the procedure and allow AKSHI to continue with the tender. But the fight continued. On December 18, the tender was blocked again. This time it was a complaint from the Datalog company.
Two days after the PPC's decision to allow the tender to proceed, NAKSHI uploaded two new annexes to the tender documents. According to the complaint of the DATALOG company to the PPC, these annexes practically predetermined the winner.
"Specifically, on page 34 of the document attached.doc published in the SPE, the Contracting Authority (AKSHI) itself claims that criterion 2.3.4 set by it can only be met by two Economic Operators. So the CA claims that this competition, according to the CA, can be won either by Infosoft Systems sh.a or Horizon shpk or by both together as a union of economic operators! So clearly we are dealing with a de facto closed procedure, where the winner is predetermined," Datalog denounced in the complaint addressed to the KPP.
Datalog's complaint accusing AKSHI of fixing the winner
Criterion 2.3.4 required that companies must have authorization from Oracle, specifically for Albania. This criterion was met by only two companies. Infosoft of Armand Sharra and Bledar Dhima, and Horizon of Ermal Beqiri. Meanwhile, a foreign company that might have the same agreement with Oracle, but not specifically for Albania, was automatically disqualified.
Historically, the fiscalization system was maintained by a Croatian company linked to Croatian President Milanovic. But as it turned out, the group that controlled AKSH had decided to bring the Croats of Primus to their knees, despite their power.
As a result, the tender for the maintenance of fiscalization has not yet been held, even today, almost 1 year after its announcement. Since June of last year, the fiscalization system has been practically without maintenance, due to the lack of a tender. This is also the reason why recently, businesses are facing serious difficulties in issuing invoices in their daily activities, as the system collapses time and time again. This is an additional cost that corruption imposes on the economy and citizens.
Editorial
