Procurement controversies -- Hungary

Some of the story reported below is lost in translation to English, but the gist is clear.

Public procurement council contracts for spiffy new office – without public procurement tender!

In an almost comic display of the weak state of public procurement safeguards in Hungary, the country’s Public Procurement Council (KT) awarded a contract worth hundreds of millions of forints for the fit-out of its new offices without ever announcing an open bid tender for the job.

Transparency International said it asked the Competition Office and the State Audit Office to instruct the Public Procurement Arbitration Committee (KDB) to launch an investigation of the deal. But the KT said the technical specifications of the project excluded all other procurement options and that the KDB had approved its choice.