The Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) has upheld a first-instance decision that prohibited the performance of a concession agreement on the provision of secured electronic communications for incarcerated persons, which was concluded between the Czech Prison Service and BVfon Czech Telecommunication, s.r.o. in November 2016. The Office announced the decision on its website on October 2, 2017.
In this latest decision, the Office held that the contracting authority had breached its statutory duty by choosing a contractor in a small-scale concession procedure without any proper announcement of this process. According to the Office, the concession holder’s anticipated revenue exceeded CZK 20,000,000, and the procedure therefore should therefore have commenced with an announcement. The Office also had to deal with the question of the applicable statute since the contracting authority had released the concession documents on September 20, 2016, i.e. before the effective date of the new Act No. 134/2016 Coll. on Public Contracts, which was October 1, 2016.
The performance of the contract was prohibited in a decision whose legal effectiveness was postponed for 12 months. The Office also imposed a fine of CZK 100,000 for the breach of the Concession Act.
This is the second time that the Office has decided on this matter and prohibited the performance of this contract. The Office’s first decision on January 26, 2017 was later overturned by the Office’s president. The new decision is not yet final and an appeal has been filed.