Former Finance Minister and SDKÚ vice-chair Ivan Mikloš said on April 28 that even though the contract awarded in the disputed bulletin-board tender will be cancelled by the consortium of companies, it will not change the fact that the state will lose the €11.62 million that has been already paid out to the consortium, as reported by the TASR newswire.
The Construction Ministry awarded this €120 million contract to a consortium of companies, two of which are close to SNS leader Ján Slota, TASR wrote. The opposition parties have been criticising the tender for five months now. It was only after criticism of the tender on part of the EU that Prime Minister Robert Fico ordered the newly-appointed Construction Minister, Igor Štefanov, to cancel the contract. The previous minister resigned earlier in April.
Mikloš said that PM Fico and the ministry are responsible for this wasted €11.62 million, as Fico knew about the disputed tender for several months and did nothing. Mikloš said that were it not for European institutions that the whole amount of money of the taxpayers would have been stolen away. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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