Kathmandu- The Passport Department has revised the passport printing tender after a complaint was filed with the Public Procurement Monitoring Office and the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority against the global tender called by the Passport Department for passport printing.

The complainant alleges that the document was prepared to award the tender to a specific company and that the specifications were prepared under the influence of the company currently printing e-passports. The contract was revised after complaints were received from all agencies that the Passport Department had previously sought a bid to award the contract to IDEMIA, which is currently printing passports. The Passport Department extended the deadline to February 11 after a dispute arose over the fact that the bid was called by January 12. Six companies had filed complaints with the Public Procurement Monitoring Office against the Passport Department. The Procurement Monitoring Office had also sent a letter to the Passport Department to address the complaint.

The department revised the bid document on January 20 only after the complaint. The amendment to the current system that does not allow companies participating in joint ventures to participate in the competition has been changed so that three companies can apply jointly.
The department has also amended the system that gives priority to the same company applying for Package 1 and Package 2. According to the amended system, the annual turnover of the company participating in Package 1 in the last 3 years must be 12 million US dollars, for Package 2 40 million, and for companies participating in both packages 52 million US dollars annually. The requirement of 5 years of technical experience and 3 years of experience in production and operation has been amended to 3 years of experience in evaluation of bids.

It is alleged that even after the Passport Department amended the tender document, some provisions that would benefit IDEMIA remain same and that IDEMIA itself could win the tender even after the document amendment. The complainant claims that even though the Passport Department amended some issues, only the company that has been printing the passport is going to be eligible as the provisions has been ammended accordingly to benifit the company.

The Passport Department has called a meeting of companies interested in participating in the tender on January 31. The department has informed that it will hold online or physical discussions with companies interested in participating in the tender on Friday regarding the amendments made on January 20.

A complaint has also been filed with the State Administration Committee alleging that IDEMIA has arbitrarily misappropriated billions of state funds and citizen data, but despite the complaint being registered with the committee, the investigation has not been progressed yet.

The Passport Department first awarded the MRP passport contract to a French company named Oberthur Technology in 2010 at a cost of 200 million. Based on the 200 million contract, the Passport Department later awarded billions of rupees to the Oberthur company directly through variation without competition. The Oberthur company was later purchased by another French company, IDEMIA. In 2020, the Passport Department again awarded a contract worth about 2.5 billion rupees to IDEMIA. The contract included IDEMIA supplying the Passport Department with electronic equipment, systems and printing 2 million e-passport booklets.

IDEMIA banned by the World Bank

IDEMIA was banned by the World Bank for 2.5 years eight years ago. Before IDEMIA was formed, it was a French digital security company, Aberthar Technologies. The World Bank had banned it for engaging in corrupt activities and practices in connection with a project related to the National Identity Card System of Bangladesh.

Even then, the company made illegal payments to subcontractors to customize the tender specifications, according to a statement issued by the World Bank on November 30, 2017. With this, the company was excluded from the contract funded by the World Bank.