The controversial procurement of 30 million lev, which executive power wanted to provide its airfares, again trigerred a lot of emotions. Three of the main players in it – travel agencies Hornit Ltd., Bulgarian VIP Travel Ltd and Astral Holidays AD, which in February 2012 were found of having formed a cartel by the Commission for Protection of Competition, suddenly turned out to be sinless. What also evaporated was the salt fines imposed on them for manipulating the auction. And after this last development, it won’t be surprising if these companies manage to swallow the state millions.
Despite the fog around this tender, the BANKER weekly learned that the full reversal of the match between tour operators and anti-monopolist office happened on Dec. 4. Then a three-member panel of the Supreme Administrative Court quashed the decision of the Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC), which imposed sanctions on Hornit, Bulgarian VIP Travel and Astral Holidays in the amount of 48,480 levs, 47 280 levs and 2,818,800 levs respectively. The decree of the magistrates actually nullifies the allegations of violations under Article 15, paragraph 1 of the Law on Protection of Competition for forming a prohibited agreement or cartel.
But how this happened? The reasoning for the decision of the magistrates reveals some interesting details about it.
The case was brought to court by the Minister of Finance Simeon Dyankov in early 2011. The reason for his doubts were completely identical, even to the tenth of a penny, price offers submitted by the companies. It is also worth mentioning that Hornit and Bulgarian VIP Travel often apply for public procurement together as a consortium. The first company is owned by Agrohold JSC and Terra Group Service Ltd., and its governor is Lachezar Todorov. The other company is headed by Vladi Alexiev, who is also the majority shareholder. Executives of both companies, however, are adamant that the facts about the connection between Hornit and Bulgarian VIP Travel stay irrelevant to these proceedings.
Commission for Protection of Competition also said that the companies accused of having formed a cartel were aware that they could get caught and tried to shuffle the figures a bit. However, they did not change the proper numbers and in all these proposals the sums after the decimal point were identical. According to the anti-monopoly body such a match is only possible if companies used the same prices and were using the booking system Amadeus, which were subsequently converted from euros into Bulgarian levs at the same rate.
All of these seemingly reasonable explanations and conclusions, however, were declared by the Supreme Administrative Court unjustified and alleged cartel – unproven.
The BANKER
