Romanian Govt. notifies Court of Justice on irregularities in spending for yet unfinished e-Romania 2 platform

The Romanian Government will notify the Prosecutors of the High Court of Justice to investigate possible criminal acts in the way the country’s Ministry of Communication spent the money allocated to the e-Romania 2 platform, in the period 2010-2011, which is still not finalized. In 2010, the Ministry of Communication signed a contract with the IT&C provider Omnilogic for the development of the e-Romania 2 platform, an important part of the “e-Romania National Program”, which was to include information on all the areas in the country, such as history, or information on culture, health, education and business. However, a report of the prime minister’s Control Department, recently published on the Government’s website, showed some irregularities in organizing the auction for awarding the contract and in spending the funds. According to the report’s findings, “the specifications draft for the e-Romania 2 project was transmitted to the Electronic Public Procurement System for publication and was published in October 2009, without being approved by the head of the contracting authority or the authorized person, in this case the general secretary of the Ministry of Communications.” Moreover, according to the report, the offer submitted by Omnilogic got unjustified points. Also, from the inspectors’ investigations resulted indicators of falsification of a document related to the awarding procedure, as well as the replacement of one of the files in the winning bid. “The 233 file of Omnilogic’s technical bid, which refers to maintenance services for the hardware and software infrastructure and which contains the only information in the bid related to the guarantee period for the software solution, of 36 months, has significant differences compared to the other files of the bid,” reads the report. The possible criminal acts found in the report include forgery, abuse of office against public interests and intellectual fraud. By the time of the inspection, the Ministry of Communication had paid 71.5 percent of the total value of the contract, even if the the platform is yet to be created and put into use. Find the entire report here(in Romanian). Romanian businessman Gabriel Marin is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Omnilogic, the IT&C company founded in 1992. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com