The state wants to know the ultimate owners of companies that will be awarded public contracts.
Every public order in the Czech Republic should now also have the names of people who are often in the background in its family tree. But at the same time they are important: they will be the real owners of the companies that will make money from the order.
The new, long-awaited law on public procurement, now under discussion in the House of Representatives, requires contract winners to fully disclose their ownership structure. This means up to the end owners, today often hidden behind holding companies or companies from tax havens. If the winner of the competition does not do this, the contracting authority, i.e. the town hall, ministry or office, excludes him from the competition. The news will also apply to the so-called beneficiaries - people who do not own the company, but receive profits from it.
"The contracting authority must request from the selected applicant documents on the property structure of the supplier up to the real owner," confirmed the spokeswoman for the Ministry of Regional Development, Veronika Vároši. Today, the rules are more lenient: stock companies are obliged to disclose owners with a share of more than ten percent. But only to the "first generation". So when a company is part of a chain of other companies, the names of specific people don't appear anywhere anyway.
Paragraphs for future Aleš Řebíčky
As shown by last year's survey by Bisnode and the anti-corruption organization Transparency International, over the past eight years, public contracts worth 244 billion were awarded in the Czech Republic to companies without obvious owners.
Of course, the equation does not apply that every company registered in a tax haven is automatically suspected of bribery in public contracts or that it is secretly owned, for example, by politicians who decide on tenders. But there were many stories in the past in which anonymous companies connected with unusual orders. For example, the almost two-billion dollar competition for the supply of medical equipment for the Prague clinic IKEM, which was won by a newly founded company with no experience. Or contracts related to the Prague Opencard project. Former Transport Minister Aleš Řebíček from ODS allegedly sold his company Viamont to an unknown buyer − and Viamont then started winning state tenders worth billions.
Rewrite to the lawyers - and we will move on
According to the Ministry of Regional Development, the disclosure of the owners should contribute to the detection of conflicts of interest: for example, whether a politician is suspected of having the same conflict between his position and business as the aforementioned ex-Minister of Transport Řebíček.
But public procurement experts object that the new paragraphs will not actually change anything. "It's just a measure that looks good on the outside. But it can never work in practice," said attorney Jan Vych, who focuses on public contracts. It is said to be sufficient if the company in the role of the tender winner proves that it is managed by a lawyer. "And he must maintain confidentiality about his clients, i.e. also about the end owners," said Vych.
The details of how the proof of ownership should look are not yet known - the Ministry of Justice is currently working on this. For example, how widely listed companies with frequently changing shareholders will document their owners. "Of course, it's not a self-saving solution and it can be circumvented. On the other hand, it is positive that the state is trying to limit anonymous owners," said Milan Eibl, an analyst at Transparency International. According to Eibl, the law itself will make it more difficult for non-transparent companies to obtain contracts. They will be able to transfer shares to attorneys or otherwise hide the ownership, but this will mean additional costs for them.
Lucia Žilková, the chief lawyer from the consulting company Otidea, is annoyed that the contract law does not address what the mayor or the official responsible for the contract should do when they come across a questionable name in the list of final owners. Because this in itself will not be a reason to exclude the company from the tender. "So the most he can say to himself is: All right. And the order will continue," explained Žilková. According to her, it can therefore be assumed that information about the owners will be more valuable for the police in cases of manipulated tenders.
Source: 12.1.2016/XNUMX/XNUMX, Hospodářské noviny, Vojtěch Blažek
