ACC to re-evaluate five consultancy firms' offers

FE Team | Published: January 10, 2013 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Jubair Hasan The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has taken an initiative to re-evaluate financial and technical offers of five consultancy firms for the Padma Multipurpose Bridge project by a team of independent experts, officials said. The anti-graft body, investigating the alleged corruption conspiracy in the appointment of consultant for the project, will do the re-evaluation through an independent body of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) to find out whether the committee, led by Professor Jamilur Reza Choudhury, was neutral. "Yes, we're seriously considering the issue as part of the investigation and we're communicating with the BUET authorities for the reevaluation," a senior ACC official linked with the investigation process said. He said they have collected all the necessary documents of the evaluation committee and these will be handed over to the new BUET body for rechecking. Thirteen engineering and consultancy firms initially showed interest in the country's largest bridge project over the Padma river and the evaluation committee then selected five from among those, considering their financial and technical capabilities. The shortlisted companies are the United Kingdom-based High-Point Rendel, Tokyo-based Oriental Consultants Company Ltd, United Kingdom-based Halcrow Group Ltd, Canada-based SNC Lavalin International Inc and New Zealand-based AECOM New Zealand Ltd. High-Point Rendel has got the highest score (84.74) mark after the technical evaluation followed by SNC Lavalin (84.00), Aecom (80.76), Halcrow (80.73) and Oriental (78.90), according to the documents collected by the ACC. But the evaluation committee had chosen the Canadian consultancy firm, SNC Lavalin, and gave the highest combined score of 81.513 after calculating financial offers of the firms. High-Point Rendel got combined score of 79.801 and was downgraded to third position as the UK-housed Halcrow Group went up to second spot by scoring 79.824 as shown by the ACC data. The ACC officials said the commission is also considering appointment of information technology (IT) experts to recover information, when deleted from the mail addresses of the detained former Bridge Division's secretary Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan and superintendent engineer of Bangladesh Bridge Authority Kazi Mohammad Ferdous in connection with the alleged corruption conspiracy. They said the commission recently seized their computers and laptops and found nothing significant in their mails through the ACC inquiry officers in their report said that the government officials had communicated with some of the SNC Lavalin officials through e-mails. Besides, ACC commissioner Md Badiuzzaman told the reporters that the Canadian government responded to their request for sending an ACC investigation team to record the statements of the three SNC Lavalin officials, which is an important element of the graft conspiracy case. "The Canadian authority wanted a copy of the investigation report. But the process is yet to be completed as we've replied," he said. The anti-graft watchdog in December last filed the case against seven persons for their alleged involvement in the corruption conspiracy for the selection of consultant for constructing the 6.1 kilometer-long bridge. The accused in the case are: Former secretary of Bridge Division Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, superintending engineer (river control) of Bangladesh Bridge Authority Kazi M Ferdous, executive engineer (bridge construction and maintenance) of Roads and Highways Department M Riaz Ahmed Zaber, deputy managing director of Engineering and Planning Consultant Limited (EPC) Mohammad Mustafa, former director (international project division) of SNC Lavalin Inc Mohammad Ismail, former vice president (international project division) of SNC Lavalin Romesh Shah and former vice-president of SNC Lavalin Kevin Wallace. Mohammad Mustafa, local agent of SNC Lavalin, fled the country and the remaining three -- Mohammad Ismail, Ramesh Shah and Kevin Wallace (all are Canadian nationals) -- are currently living in Canada, the ACC sources said.