The Independent Office for Regulation and Supervision of Procurement (OIReScon), the body that supervises the operation of public procurement, demands more transparency about companies banned from contracting with the Administration.
In its latest annual report, the entity demands the dissemination of a specific list and points out that “the causes of prohibitions on contracting have a high informative value when it comes to pointing out areas of risk in the behavior of economic operators in public procurement. , especially in matters of corruption or collusive clauses.”
The entity has been demanding measures for years to correct the opacity in the vetoes to contractors applied by different administrations. In its 2024 report, recently published, it insists on “the difficult detection of the prohibition to contract” as a consequence of the wording of the bidding regulations itself. And he points out that “it could be of interest to maintain a list of companies that are prohibited from contracting.”
This information is currently not published by the Ministry of Finance, which is in charge of applying vetoes at the state level and centralizing the status of each bidder in a specific registry. In the opinion of OIReScon, this list of banned companies should be “accessible without the need for specific queries” and “without prejudice to the due protection of the personal data that corresponds in each case.”
The regulations establish that companies that, among other cases, have been sanctioned for various crimes (against the public treasury, corruption, against the environment, etc.) or for serious infractions in professional matters that indicate that they may not contract with the Administration. questioning its integrity, such as distorting the market or violating workers’ rights.
But, in the information age, knowing if a contractor is banned requires searching one by one for the companies registered in the state registry of bidders, called ROLECE (Official Registry of Bidders and Classified Companies of the State). That list requested by OIReScon is not available.
At the end of 2023, 91,715 companies had been registered in that registry, 12.5% more than a year before and almost 30% more than at the end of 2021. The consultation in that registry, managed by the Treasury, requires having an electronic certificate installed. .
The Transparency and Good Governance Council (CTBG) has already ruled in favor of making public this list of companies banned for irregular practices. He did so after in 2022 a citizen asked the Treasury for a list of banned companies that were registered in the ROLECE, under the Transparency Law.
The ministry limited itself to pointing out that at that time there were 138 companies in that situation. But he did not detail them, since, he argued, “no provision for active advertising is regulated regarding this information and, additionally, for reasons of protection of personal data and reputation of people in a matter of obvious sensitivity.” However, Transparency ended up forcing the Treasury to send the list to that citizen in 2023, after considering a claim.
The OIReScon report reflects that in the regional records, transparency regarding these vetoes is also conspicuous by its absence: “The majority of the information regarding the registration of the ban or the ban itself is obsolete or a number of cases are reported. minimum”. There is only data on the bans in force (in some cases outdated) in Euskadi, Andalusia, Comunitat Valenciana and Aragón. In the case of Andalusia, both companies and individuals are included, despite the Treasury’s cautions regarding the protection of personal data.
The report recalls that the moment in which this veto is recorded in the official records “is essential since, in certain cases, it marks the beginning of its effects.” “From the supervision of the regional registries, in many cases the absence of information on prohibitions to contract is detected and, in some, a lack of diligence by not incorporating an updated computer link to access the ROLECE,” says the report.
In the autonomous communities, the public procurement supervisor detects “a small number of registered current prohibitions.” Either because “disciplinary” measures are not adopted or because they are taken, but “they do not give rise to the corresponding procedures that would lead to the imposition of hiring prohibitions.”
Another possible reason that the report points out is that these prohibitions are imposed, but “they are not transferred to the corresponding bodies for registration in the corresponding registry.” Which in practice is the same as doing nothing.
No data on why
The report of the diminished supervisor of public contracts, an entity organically attached to the Treasury that since its creation has not been able to cover even half of its staff of nearly 50 personnel, reflects that in 2023 the prohibitions on contracting registered in the Heritage Directorate They were reduced to just over a hundred companies and individuals. It is the lowest figure since the office that supervises the operation of public procurement published this data, as can be seen in the following graph.
The organization highlights that 38.56% of the vetoes to contractors that were registered (40) were prohibitions “in which their origin is not specified.” In other words, “there is no information about the reasons for contracting” in almost 40% of cases, “which makes it difficult to adopt preventive measures or actions that minimize the risk of its commission.”
In 2023, the president of the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC), Cani Fernández, announced in the Congress of Deputies that the body would “directly” apply the prohibition on hiring for companies fined for distorting competition. The veto, which in theory had been legally possible since 2015, was not fully applied since the decision on the duration and scope of the prohibitions fell to the Treasury. In June 2023, the organization published a Communication with the general criteria for applying these vetoes. The CNMC does not detail which vetoes it has applied so far.
One of the prohibitions that emerged in 2023 was the one applied to the private security subsidiary of the services giant Eulen, which was banned for seven months by the Treasury from contracting with the Administration. In this case it was not related to restrictive practices of competition, but rather to Eulen’s humiliating treatment of a worker in Madrid.
The office that supervises public procurement considers “advisable that, on the part of the contracting bodies, mechanisms be put in place to try to supervise the main causes of prohibition to contract declared in their scope.” And that measures be taken so that when registering these vetoes “their cause is indicated, with the necessary precautions regarding data protection and due confidentiality.”
“We insist on pointing out the high value that information on the cause of the prohibition to contract can have when designing a risk map for public procurement, especially with regard to the fight against corruption and collusive practices. “, says the report, which highlights that non-payment of salaries or justified delays and the illegal transfer of workers account for “a high percentage” of the prohibitions. Between the two they added up to 38.18%.
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