PFP Legislator Sun Ta-chien (孫大千) yesterday accused government officials, including a high-level Presidential Office official, of meddling in the bidding process for a lucrative National Fire Agency (NFA) contract.
The nearly NT$50-million contract for a disaster-protection and prevention system was won by a joint bid from Origo, a firm specializing in global-positioning-satellite technology, and Ching Yun University, a recently founded private university in central Taiwan.
Their offer edged out a rival bid formed by 89 professors -- many from the prestigious National Taiwan University (NTU) -- and the backbone of Taiwan's information technology research and development, the Institute for Information Industries.
In the first leg of the two-round bidding process, the NTU consortium defeated the Ching Yun bid by an overwhelming margin, Sun said.
But after the second round, the NFA committee decided that the Ching Yun team would be awarded the contract.
"How could the Ching Yun team beat the NTU team? It's all because the NFA threw its professionalism out of the window and manipulated the whole process with the intention of landing a lucrative kickback," Sun said.
According to Sun, with the contract to plan the NFA's new system safely pocketed, the Ching Yun consortium will easily land the bid for the system's construction.
The construction project boasts an even bigger budget of more than NT$700 million, with what Sun said was a potential 20-percent kickback.
"Construction businessmen said somebody in the Presidential Office was involved in [the handing of the planning contract to the Ching Yun consortium]. If any of the rake-off is used in the future presidential campaign, it will be a serious scandal," Sun said.
Sun did not name any government officials in connection with his allegations.
The NFA said Sun had no grounds for his accusation and was totally wrong.
The contract won by the Ching Yun consortium is for the planning stage only and is not related to construction, the NFA said in a press release.
The party contracted to carry out the planning stage is forbidden to solicit for the construction contract according to the government's procurement regulations, the press release said.
An independent committee formed by experts and academics made the final decision in the planning bid and if any illegalities are revealed, an internal affairs department would carry out an investigation, it said.
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