12 MILLION KM TI BIH Demands Publication of Vaccine Procurement Contracts with Chinese Companies in FBiH

(Patria) - Transparency International in BiH (TI BIH) has been unable to access the contract for the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines worth 12.5 million marks, signed by the Public Health Institute of the Federation of BiH with Chinese companies Biotec Grupe and Sinopharm, since the end of last year. Due to all of this, TI BIH has requested the intervention of the Administrative Inspectorate, as the Institute first refused to provide the information and is now refusing to resolve TI BIH's complaint, making it impossible to seek judicial protection.

The Government of the Federation of BiH has authorized the Institute to mark the contract as "confidential," even though, according to the BiH Law on Secrecy of Data, such a designation is only possible if the disclosure of information would "harm the security or interests of Bosnia and Herzegovina." In this case, these conditions are not met, but the Institute refuses to provide the contract, stating in its response to TI BIH that the confidentiality marking was a condition set by the Chinese company for the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines to be concluded at all. The secrecy mark has been applied for ten years, and the Institute states that the publication of the contract "could have harmful financial consequences for the Federation of BiH and future business with business partners."

In the entire case, the management of the Institute has not taken into account the fact that this is a matter of public interest, so TI BIH will continue the legal battle for the publication of this contract, especially given that the procurement was illegally exempted from the application of the Law on Public Procurement. This was also pointed out in the latest report by the Audit Office of Institutions of the Federation of BiH, which states that the justification for exempting the provisions of this Law cannot be confirmed.

The vaccine procurement process lasted over three months, which is contrary to the legal provisions that define exemptions from the public procurement process due to urgency, which, according to the Public Procurement Agency of BiH, represent situations requiring immediate action, e.g., within one or two hours, or even minutes, meaning when it is objectively impossible to apply even a negotiated procedure, according to the Audit Report of this Institute.

Interestingly, the Institute's management, in its response to TI BIH, quotes precisely this interpretation by the Public Procurement Agency, justifying the exemption by stating that it had to react within one or two hours or even minutes. However, the procurement was initiated on March 10, and the contract was concluded only on June 9, which clearly shows that there was enough time to implement a more transparent procedure. An additional problem is that the contract for the transport of these vaccines, worth over 470,000 KM, was also exempted from the Law on Public Procurement and awarded to the company "Hercegovinalijek," even though there was sufficient time to conduct a more transparent procedure.

The auditors also state that over 300,000 of these vaccines remained in storage at the end, and they were the least used for immunization.

Furthermore, the auditors' report states that significant quantities of vaccines were not used due to expiry dates and were disposed of for destruction. The Institute did not present documentation to the audit office to determine the vaccine specifications, nor did it verify the qualifications of the bidders. The auditors conclude that the Government of the FBiH declared the contract confidential at the request of the supplier, despite it involving public funds and the procurement of goods related to the public health of the citizens of the FBiH, which is not in accordance with the principle of transparency defined by the Law on Budgets in FBiH.

TI BIH emphasizes that the publication of this contract is also important due to the fact that citizens have witnessed numerous corruption scandals during the pandemic, leading to investigations and court proceedings, which has certainly eroded public trust in the entire system.