OREANDA-NEWS  On 18 February was announced, that the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) found that the Russian Federal Agency of Surveying and Mapping violated the Federal Law "On State and Municipal Procurement of Goods, Works and Services" and issued a determination to eliminate the violations.

The case was initiated upon petitions of "Dongeoinformatika" Ltd. and "GEO-DON" Ltd. The Petitioners stated that аthe Agency had violated the law in an open tender for topographic-and-surveying and mapping works.

Investigating the case, the FAS Russia's Commission established:

1. In the tender documentation the Ordering Party specified significance of the criterion on "the quality of works and qualification" as 45% (which exceeded the level of significance of this criterion determined by the law on state procurement).

2. The Bids Opening Protocol did not contain the information on the data and documents submitted with the bids in accordance with the tender documentation. The Protocol also did not include the conditions for executing the government contract, which must be used as the criteria for bids evaluation.

3. The Bids Evaluation and Comparison Protocol did not specify the procedures for bids evaluation and comparison under the criteria "the quality of works and bidder's qualification", "the contract price", and "performance time".

4. The procedures for bids evaluation and comparison, described in the tender documentation, prevented evaluating the bids on the pro rata basis and allowed allocating the same scores for different bids.

In course of an unscheduled inspection, FAS Russia discovered that the tender documentation specified that the bids must include data and documents which were not required by the law: calculations of the contract price with justification of the reduction of the starting price, and the letter of guaranty for performance of the obligations undertaken under the government contract.

Having investigated the case, FAS Russia issued a determination to the Agency requesting it to withdraw the tender protocols, to bring the tender documentation in compliance with the Federal Law "On State Procurement…", and to extend the bidding deadline for twenty days.

The FAS Russia's Commission also discovered the signs of administrative violations under Parts 1 and 4 Article 7.30 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Violations, and transferred the case to an official of the Department for State Procurement Control to determine whether administrative proceedings should be initiated.