E-Clips:- Business Pictorial - French Firm Defends Passport Deal

The French printing firm which won the controversial Sh2.7 billion passport tender yesterday came out in defence of the deal.

Francois-Charles Oberthur Fiduciaire said the tender award was conducted above board and reports to the contrary were misleading.

It also termed as "inaccurate and unfair" claims that the tender price was inflated from a Sh800 million project to one costing Sh2.7 billion. In an official response to the passport deal which has elicited an outcry across the country, the firm said suspicions of corruption being directed at the tender award were unfounded.

"Articles in the public media and questions raised in Parliament have compared the project with an earlier tender and have suspected possible corruption. This suspicion appears to us as defamatory since it is impossible to directly compare the two projects which are totally different in scope and functions by their respective costs," the firm said.

Whereas the earlier project involved replacement of passports issuing system based on prevailing technology at the time, the immigration project "is a full scale security project to strengthen Kenyas national security and its role in international fight against terrorism", it added.

The project is based on advanced high security technology and security documents and covers areas ranging from passport issuing and replacement, visa management, high security border control, computerised revenue collection for passports and visas and several other immigration-related data bases.

The undated statement on the company official letter head was stamped by lawyer Fred O. Ojiambo of Kaplan and Stratton legal firm which is representing the company locally. On the reported inflation of the tender price, the French firm said it was unfair to compare the two prices as they reflected different scopes of the project.

"It is important to ascertain these facts so that public statements do not misrepresent the facts about the project and its costs. Many statements made do not present an accurate picture about Francois-Charles Oberthur Fiduciaire, our technical qualifications and records for undertaking this project and about the true nature and scope of the immigrations project".

Questions over the contract centre on a decision by the Treasury to cancel a smaller proposal for which three reputable international companies had qualified, expanding it to one costing billions of shillings against opposition from the Immigration department then contracting a different firm without putting the procurement to tender.

Critics have pointed that none of the three firms short-listed in the original tender were invited to bid for the new project, which was granted to the French printing firm Francois-Charles Oberthur Fiduciaire.

Questions have also been raised about the financing of the deal by Anglo Leasing and Finance Ltd, which gave its address as Liverpool, UK, but after media inquiries, explained that it was based in Switzerland and operated only a representative office in the British town.

The contract has since been stopped by the government pending the outcome of investigation. This followed a national uproar that greeted the revelation of the tender in Parliament by Ntonyiri MP Maoka Maore.

The suspension was announced in Parliament by National Security minister Chris Murungaru who said the outcome would be made public "at the earliest possible time". Legal action would be taken against any Government official found to have been involved in improprieties in the contract, the minister vowed.