Contracts, Data and Investigations - Edition 74
Inside Hungary’s procurement, Canada’s costly IT contracts, the real owners of Ecuador’s suppliers, talking corruption at UNCAC, and more
In this newsletter, we cover stories about the use and abuse of public contracts and provide tips and insights on how to investigate public procurement. Are you investigating a public contract right now? Get in touch – we’d love to help.
[What we are keeping an eye on]
This week, the 190 governments that subscribed to the UN Convention against Corruption are meeting in Atlanta, USA to review the global framework against corruption. Celebrating its 20th anniversary, there’s a lot to update to bring the convention into the 21st century, particularly on public procurement. Many of the stories in this newsletter illustrate why this matters.
Take a look at the Hungarian company that’s winning almost every tender it enters: In an extensive data-driven investigation, Atlatszo’s Eszter Katus and Krisztián Szabó examined several hundred public procurement procedures won by the one company and identified a pattern: the same businesses consistently appeared as competitors, and the procurement consultant was often the same. In another investigation, their colleague Csaba Segesvári took an in-depth look at the US$52m contract for PCR tests by the National Blood Service.
Outsourced IT procurement has some of the highest cost overruns. For Canada’s Investigative Journalism Foundation, Roberto Rocha analyzed 7,100 contracts for IT and telecom consulting that cost an average of 134% of the agreed-on price and examined why they are so prone to overspending.
Investing into green energy is good, right? Unfortunately, as the latest Contratopedia Colombia and La Silla Vacia investigation shows, this is no guarantee of an honest deal. Ever Mejía y Tatiana Velásquez investigated the conflicts of interest and opaque contracting practices behind the public-private company managing green spending, such as installing solar systems at 319 public buildings.
Unsurprisingly, Novaya Gazeta Europe’s Sergey Teplyakov finds that corruption is flourishing in the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine as money for reconstruction pours in. Compare that to Ukraine’s efforts to ensure everyone can see everything and participate in the reconstruction effort through its DREAM platform. The Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine & DREAM - Digital Restoration Ecosystem for Accountable Management launched DREAM's business intelligence module, providing a new level of transparency to the reconstruction. The module offers user-friendly dashboards & open data analytics.
You can’t imagine it: A company formed in the British Virgin Islands allegedly bribed the Nigerian government to secure a contract to construct and operate a gas processing plant, and then sued the government for damages when it fell apart. But Nigeria won its bid to overturn the $11 billion bill for damages (Judgment). Reuter’s Sam Tobin has the details.
[Data insights]
Ecuador: The civil society organization Fundapi has published a visualization of beneficial ownership data for public contracts. To develop the dashboard, Fundapi had to purchase company data to link to the country’s open data on public procurement. The dashboard was developed with the support of OCP.
CSO Fundación Ciudadanía y Desarrolló improved its red flags platform by adding additional visualizations and downloads to access the data.
Guatemala: If you’ve been trying to review Guatemala’s public contracts data on the official website Guatecompras after 28 November, you were met with an error message. Luckily, CSO Sociedad.info created a copy of the portal’s data using open data available on the Ministry of Finance’s open data site. Review the information here until the portal is back up.
Kazakhstan: An investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tasqyn Bolatuly looks at the company and actors behind the slow progress of a road construction project, revealing conflicts of interest and alleged embezzlement. While the company continues to win other construction projects, it is unclear when the road will be completed.
UK: After vowing to reinvest money saved by scrapping a section of the controversial High-Speed train service project, the government will have to spend £1.25bn on work related to part of the line now terminated, according to an analysis by the Guardian’s Gwyn Topham, Michael Savage and Jon Ungoed-Thomas. The money covers environmental work, construction, utilities and civil engineering. Click here to dig deeper into the invoicing data behind the analysis, provided by Tussell (XLS).
[Data tools & resources]
For journalists covering public procurement: the TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting: Uncovering Commercial Bribery is now accepting nominations through 31 January 2024. All details here.
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This newsletter has been put together by the Open Contracting Partnership. Thanks for reading. Do give us a like if you’ve enjoyed the read. Did a friend forward you this email?