Chile’s multi-million dollar bid for passport production triggers controversy

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Early on Monday (16) at least two complaints were lodged against Chinese company Aisino, accused by its competitors of failing to comply with technical and administrative requirements in a multi-million dollar Chilean bidding process for the production of the country’s passports.

A total of 5 companies are competing to produce Chilean identity cards and passports for the next 10 years. The process has been dragging on for over a year and is known as “Tender for the new model of identification system, identity and travel documents.” This project’s investment exceeds US$525 million.

Among the 5 competing companies, Idemia is bidding with a proposal of US$245 million; Sonda submitted a US$261 million proposal; Telefónica Chile US$303 million and German Veridos a proposal of US$379 million. These financial proposals include not only the monetary aspects but also the documents’ administrative and technical aspects.

However, a little over 2 months before this bidding is completed, competition has been directed to the Public Procurement Court (TCP), which accepted to process two claims against the Civil Registry and Identification Service (SRCEI). One was lodged by Idemia and the other by Sonda, managed by Andrés Navarro, a friend of Chilean President Sebastián Piñera.

The companies behind these claims accuse the identity service’s Evaluation Commission of “anomalies” by allowing other competitors to enter the race, such as Telefónica and Veridos.

However, Idemia and Sonda’s claims targeted Chinese Aisino, which submitted the lowest bid (US$222 million), thus beating the rest of the competition. The background reports submitted indicate that Aisino “would fail to comply” with the biometric system standards that prevent identity theft, and that there would be no international certification to verify it.

A mysterious change in the rules

The unannounced change in the project’s terms and conditions has aroused curiosity in this bidding process. When the tender was opened over a year ago, the financial bid was assigned 50% relevance. Overnight, this figure changed to 65%, while the technical aspect rose to 35% and the remaining 5% to administrative issues.

In addition, it was decided that bidders will not physically deliver documents. These will be reviewed according to foreign certifications.

Changing the financial proposal to 65% of the total number of bids has further increased competition among bidders to provide better numbers, which would help the Chilean State to invest less money.

If the decision were taken purely for economic reasons, Chinese Aisino would clearly be the winner since it is the cheapest and outperforms its other competitors such as Senda or Telefónica.

United States on alert

Local media quoted anonymous sources who said that the United States is expressing its concern to the Chilean authorities about Aisino’s advantage over its competitors.

Given the trade competition between China and the United States, the latter fears that the Asian giant may secure the production of passports or identity cards, as these could be used in “technological espionage by Beijing.” In fact, an alleged FBI document alerting to this situation was attached to Senda’s complaint. However, Aisino’s vice-president Ma Chenzhou said he was unaware of the American document.

“Those who have published a false claim are the ones with the burden of proof,” he said. “For our part, we can only say that we are not aware of any FBI accusation, and like you, we have only learned of this rumor through the disclosure in blogs and websites of questionable journalistic repute that encourage conspiracy theories,” Ma said.

In addition, in recent days it became known that the United States regularly takes part in a working commission with Chilean ministries closely monitoring this bidding process, working to upgrade the national Civil Registry. This was confirmed by the authorities who stated that “these are technical meetings, where the issues addressed are strictly related to the Visa Waiver.”

Source: Infobae