BKV: you don't have to sail, ride a horse

The BKV Zrt.'s bus muti case has not even come to a standstill, the alleged malpractices of the capital company's ship operation tender, which have already been reported to the police, have already entered the picture.

While Mayor Gergely Karácsony encourages residents to cycle, walk or use public transport instead of driving, the BKV boat transport, which is a public service ordered by the capital, has completely frozen on the Budapest section of the Danube. In addition, serious irregularities are outlined in connection with the tender, which has been going on for more than a year.

Known: BKV Zrt. is overseen by Kata Tüttő, MSZP's Deputy Mayor for City Operations, who recently gained even more notoriety than before with her infamous sea riding in a bathing suit and her social media post about it, which was later deleted. Previously, he did not keep his ex-partner, oligarch Tamás Leisztinger's company away from a bus tender.

 

It is well-known: the scheduled shipping in Budapest started in 2012, under the city management of István Tarlós, and was continuous until 2019. In 2020, due to the coronavirus epidemic, the expiring contracts were not renewed, by which the seven ships of BKV Zrt. could continue to ply the foam between the Kopaszi dam and the Római-part.

But what happened next this summer after we defeated the third wave? On the one hand, as early as May 27, BKV CEO Tibor Bolla announced in the Telex columns: "This year, there will be no public service boat traffic on the Danube's capital section." He justified this by saying that, as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, both BKV and BKK, as well as the capital itself, lack resources, and therefore they are trying to focus on basic services.

Magyar Kikétó Fejlsztő és Hajózázi Üzemeltető Zrt. won the tender for the large ship operation of the "lack of funds" BKV last June, but according to this year's article of Világgazdaság, the number one loser of the tender, i.e. Rubin Group Kft., ranked directly behind the winner, submitted a legal remedy request, the " Against the public procurement procedure of BKV "Operation of regular scheduled public service with ships, within the framework of an operating contract" at the Public Procurement Decision Committee. So the process is stuck anyway.

At the same time, the BKV is not telling the truth when it complains about a lack of funds, since in 2020 the tender offering a three-year service order can be removed from the draft contract we asked for: according to the shipping tender, there is sufficient coverage for the project at around HUF 1.8 billion. Or was this money only on paper. In any case, backtracking also costs money, but we'll come back to that later!

Mandiner found a total of five relevant preliminary dispute resolution requests in the Electronic Public Procurement System, the winner's lower competitors have all submitted dispute resolution requests. This includes the two companies that originally made the most favorable price offer, which were excluded by BKV during the journey; in fact, he reported them to the Competition Authority, so to speak, due to behavior distorting competition. The excluded dispute the legitimacy of this.

The two losers of the tender, who remained in the competition, mainly complain that, in their opinion, the reference of the winner Magyar Kikötő Zrt. is not real, for example, it falsely claimed that it provided a boat service with a sufficient number of operating hours. Part of the argument is that the main activity of Silverline, the company that gave reference to the winner Magyar Kikötő Zrt, is advertising agency activity, and based on the company abstract, it appears that it has practically nothing to do with commercial shipping. In this regard, the relevant "inland passenger transport" is not even included in its scope of activities.

The applicant with the second best valid offer, the already mentioned "main loser" Rubin Group Kft. - Szénomhajózási Kft., also submitted an additional request for preliminary dispute resolution. As it turned out later: in vain. In this, they complain that, following their first request, the BKV did not disqualify the subsequent winner who, in their opinion, provided false data, but essentially only called for filling in gaps and attaching another reference. According to Hír Tv's report the other day, because of the above, someone filed a report with the police at the beginning of this week. Kristóf Gál, the spokesperson of the National Police Headquarters, has not yet confirmed this to our paper, but promised an answer, including clarifying whether, if so, an investigation will be launched and at what address.

Studying the draft contract, Mandiner also found out that if the contract is concluded with the winner and BKV terminates it immediately for some reason - for example because there is or will be a lack of coverage on his part - then a quarter of the price of a year's mandatory minimum operating hours must be paid to the winner as compensation.

This is more than one hundred million forints.

The question is whether there will ever be a contract after such developments. In any case, it would be good to know at least why it was urgent for BKV to close the procedure so quickly without examining the merits of the dispute resolution points. We asked our questions at the BKV press department, where they promised an answer later.

In any case, the conclusion of the contract will definitely be delayed due to the Rubin Group's legal remedy request. The managing director of the company only noted to Mandiner that they do not want to get involved in the politicization of the case, so they do not make a statement. They simply dispute the winner's reference; the legal remedy is all the more important for them, since with the past of the epidemic, it is vital for the shipping operators to get suitable business opportunities. (By the way, the Rubin Group was one of the main players in the continuous BKV scheduled shipping until 2019, and participated in the operation at that time.)

Zsolt Wintermantel (Fidesz-KDNP), member of the board of BKK, told us:

Based on the current information, the BKV shipping tender scandal is eerily similar to the BKV bus charter scam that broke out half a year ago.

Even then, when the information suggesting irregularities came to light, the BKV and the capital intervened first, but the case went to the police. Even now, suspicions of fake references have arisen, but according to the Budapest company, there is nothing to see here. We say: if an irregularity has occurred - and this is increasingly common under left-wing leadership - there should be consequences. To this end, I call on Mayor Gergely Karácsony to personally investigate the suspicious case of the ship tender."

As a result of all this, it is currently impossible to predict when the seven-member BKV fleet - by name: Hófehérke, Budavár, Várhegy, Lágymányos, Lánchíd, Pestbuda, Hungária - will be able to fulfill their duties again, i.e. when they will be able to fill up with passengers crossing the Danube, "congestion-free ” want to get closer to their destination in Budapest.

Source and image: mandiner.hu