Exuberant consulting contracts grew rank at NMBS/SNCB

At Ypto, the IT company of the Belgian public railway company NMBS/SNCB, consultants have been awarded lucrative contracts without public tender for years. This appears from an investigation by the Treasury, reports the newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws.

In a reaction, the NMBS/SNCB states that it has already taken measures at its IT subsidiary Ypto over the past two years and that the Treasury’s new recommendations are also being implemented.

Public procurement rules violated

In 2018, the NMBS/SNCB subsidiary Ypto signed an expensive service contract with Briton Hamd Aghassi, who is friends with NMBS/SNCB CEO Sophie Dutordoir.

Het Laatste Nieuws wrote at the time that the consultant—Aghassi, billed 2,200 euros per day—allegedly earned more than the CEO of NMBS/SNCB for two years. This brought the matter to light.

An internal audit had already revealed violations of public procurement laws but found “no interference or pressure” from Dutordoir and others. The Brussels public prosecutor closed the case because no criminal offenses were found.

EU procurement rules not applied

However, at the request of NMBS/SNCB, the State Audit Office investigated the case. The investigators did a sample and requested 20 order forms from Ypto for services they had hired from consultants in 2023.

None of the files involved proper tendering. As a result, there was no fair chance of competition, no monitoring for fraud or conflicts of interest, and no clear view of costs.

In the process, some deals had been in place for years. For example, the State Audit Office found a contract that was awarded long ago without a public tender and has since been extended no less than 24 times via a simple order form.

This brought the contract’s total value to 2.8 million euros, an amount for which generally stringent European procurement rules apply. The investigators found three more similar deals. In nearly half of the order forms examined, the agreed-upon amount was also exceeded, and sometimes additional fees that were part of the consultant’s daily rate were charged.

Rectified

Ypto’s new management and NMBS/SNCB’s top management admit that things went wrong in recent years and stress in reaction that they are working hard to rectify the situation, efforts that the State Audit Office acknowledges. An action plan has been rolled out to ensure that the law henceforth distributes contracts.

New measures have also been taken to prevent fraud or conflicts of interest.

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