Suspicious Tender with a Noteworthy Outcome: 'Hraparak'

"From now on, investigative actions such as confrontations and interrogations must be video recorded. This is reported by the newspaper 'Hraparak'. This legal requirement comes into effect on July 1. Three agencies, the Investigative Committee, the NSS, and the Anti-Corruption Committee, have announced tenders for the procurement of this equipment. The Investigative Committee’s tender is for 240 million drams, the Anti-Corruption Committee’s for 20 million, and the NSS’s for 10 million.

Five organizations participated in the first phase of the Investigative Committee's competition, while only one in the second phase. Why? Participants were informed late that a technical specification had been set for the cameras that was not feasible for implementation; businesses found themselves in a dilemma because such cameras were unknown to them, and it was impossible to acquire them at such prices. In particular, it is specified in the technical description that the cameras should have a 140-degree horizontal field of view for recording, which is pointless because there is no need to film the far corners of a room if you want to record a specific person during an interrogation.

In the second phase of the tender, 'Pritty Way' LLC was declared the winner under the brand name 'Vesta'. A contract for 167 million 640 thousand drams has been signed with this company, for which 942 camera units must be supplied to the Investigative Committee, with a unit price of 178 thousand drams.

According to the contract, the supplied cameras are of Chinese origin, branded Spectre7 china jinda INT'L. However, both 'Vesta's' competitors and we tried to search online for the technical specifications of these cameras and whether they indeed record at a 140-degree angle, but we were unable to find any cameras of that brand.

For more details, refer to today's issue of the newspaper.