BRATISLAVA, November 22, (WEBNOVINY) — The Transport Ministry believes that an analysis of financing construction and operation of five stretches of the D1 highway between Martin and Presov was manipulated in favor of use of private sources via the first package of PPP projects. On that account the ministry has filed a criminal motion against an unknown offender with the Prosecutor General Office, informed the ministry’s spokesman Lubomir Tuchscher. He specified that the Prosecutor General Office has advanced the ministry’s complaint to the respective prosecutor office, which is the Special Prosecutor’s Office. The motion arrived there on Friday, November 19, and is now waiting to be assigned to a prosecutor,” informed spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General Office Svetlana Mockova on Monday.
An analysis, which the Transport Ministry led by ex-minister Lubomir Vazny (SMER-SD) ordered from the Wood Company firm says that financing of construction of a 75-kilometer-long highway stretch via PPP was to be EUR 500 million higher compared with regular public procurement. However, the adjusted analysis which got on the Cabinet’s table stated that the section’s construction via PPP would cost a mere EUR 30 million more, said Tuchscher. Based on the manipulated analysis, the Cabinet was misled, according to him. The Cabinet of Robert Fico subsequently passed the fourth supplement to the concessionaire contract with the company Slovenske Dialnice, which was originally supposed to realize the first PPP package.
The incumbent Minister of Transport Jan Figel (KDH) however failed to extend the sixth deadline for financial closure of the project at the end of August and the concessionaire contract thus expired. Then the Ministry of Transport imposed a fine of EUR 10 million on the concessionaire for unsecured financing of the highway construction. As for the third PPP package for construction of D1 highway sections between Zilina and Martin, the Ministry of Transport has not detected yet whether information on the project’s financing might have been additionally manipulated, too. “The moment we discover something, we will take an action,” said Tuchscher.
SITA