Prague - After three years of preparation, the largest public contract in the history of the Czech Republic fails after the government announced earlier this week that it will not contract the winner of the tender.
The real price of the contract for cleaning of contaminated areas was three times less than the lowest of the three offers.
This is the result of an exclusive analysis conducted by a specialized firm. The firm permitted Aktualne.cz to release the content of the report on condition of anonymity.
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Three times more
The sum of all cleaning works included in the eco-tender is, according to the analysis, CZK 26bil (roughly one billion euro), VAT including.
Former Czech Environment Minister František Benda and Czech Environment Inspection has reached the same estimate of the total cost. The real cost is only 38 percent of the lowest price offered to the Finance Ministry by Marius Pederson Engineering, one of the three contenders.
The firm offered to clean the ecological damage for CZK 56,8bil without VAT, and CZK 68.2bil with VAT included.
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Eco-ghosts of the past
The ecological "super tender" was supposed to clean the ecological damage caused to the Czech Republic's landscape by state-owned companies during four decades of the Czechoslovak communist regime, marked by its centrally-planned economy with extreme focus on heavy industry.
When these firms were privatized in the 1990s, the state pledged to clean the environmental damage they had done. In case the Czech Republic fails to fulfill this promise, it will face the danger of being on a receiving end of international arbitrations.
