The Algerian police have ordered a probe into allegations of bribery recently raised against German technology giant Siemens. The company had been awarded a tender in March 2002 to provide the state-owned Algérie Télécom with an additional 400,000 GSM lines. The investigation may eventually lead to the nullification of the deal and consequently the re-opening of the tender, reported Algeria Interface.
Algeria’s regulatory commission first became suspicious when reviewing the final bidding report submitted to it by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication (MPT). The watchdog branded MPT’s justifications for ruling out bidders Alcatel, Motorola and Ericsson, as insubstantial.
It was then alleged by local newspaper Liberté that MPT officials had been flown to Munich via Paris at the expense of Siemens, prior to the announcement of the tender’s winner. Moreover, an MPT official was said to have altered the final bidding report so as to favor Siemens’ offer.
Algérie Télécom sources stated that two suppliers ruled out in the early phases of the tender would be allowed back in the running if the bid is re-issued. Chinese companies, Huawei Technologies and Zhongxing Telecom (ZTE), both claim to have been sidelined for having ‘inadequate’ track records. Yet Huawei has installed some 12 million lines in a score of countries, has a research center in the California Silicon Valley and supplies switch hardware to Motorola.
The expansion tender calls for the provision of infrastructure to expand the country’s mobile phone network run by state-owned operator Algérie Télécom, which intends to increase its subscriber base from 100,000 currently to 500,000. Algérie Télécom was established in 2001 with an authorized capital is 100 million Algerian dinar, broken down into 20,000 shareholdings of AD 5,000 each and held by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
