SkopjeDiem Macedonia in English
Seven people from ESM have been charged on suspicion that they enabled Rud Kop to unlawfully generate a profit of around 178 million denars (around three million euros) regarding excavation of slag at the Bitola plant’s Brod Gneotino mine. The funds of Kiril Biljanovski’s company have been frozen, the Bitola Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office said on Tuesday.
Three official persons of the Public Procurement Bureau, members of the expert commission authorised to evaluate public procurement bids to select a company for slag excavation at the plant have been charged, too. Authorities suspect they “eliminated” a competing company from participating in the process.
“The charged Director of the Bitola plant [, that is, former plant head Pece Matevski] accepted the proposal to select a most favourable bid, contained in the commission’s report on carrying out the public procurement process, even though it was in contradiction with Public Procurement Law provisions, and signed, on 3 October 2022, a contract on excavation of investment striping at the mine with Bitola-based Rud Kop worth 708,000,000 denars, VAT included.
Then, in September of 2023, he also signed an annex to the contract, increasing the public procurement’s worth by an additional 20%, that is, by 120,000,000 denars. That, too, was in contradiction with the Public Procurement Law since he had previously failed to carry out an additional analysis of profitability and failed to further secure the required funds whose securing, according to the law, had been required prior to the signing of the deal.
The Bureau’s official persons, charged with unscrupulous operation, conducted insight into the entire documentation related to the public procurement process and were supposed to find an economic operator’s bid had been unlawfully rejected. However, they failed to do so and unlawfully gave instructions to the contractual organ to proceed with the public procurement procedure and sign the contract”, the Bitola Public Prosecutor’s Office said.
