News in English     | 16.03.2018. 11:12 |

CIN wins eighth lawsuit against institutions

FENA Press release

SARAJEVO, March 16 (FENA) - The Trebinje District Court has ruled in favor of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIN) in a lawsuit against the University Hospital in Foča for failing to provide information.

In March 2017, the CIN journalists requested from this hospital the data on donations received in the period from 2010. The University Hospital in Foča ignored this request for free access to information, which is why CIN filed a lawsuit before the District Court in Trebinje in October last year for failing to provide information, CIN stated.

In response to the lawsuit, the Foča hospital stated that it was impossible to act on the request because, according to the law, they are obliged to keep the documentation for five years and that "there are various types of medical equipment, so it was difficult to determine the activities in order to find the requested information."

However, the judgment stated that according to the Freedom of Access to Information Act of Republika Srpska, every natural and legal person has the right to access information that is under the control of a public authority and each public authority is obliged to publish such information.

According to the statement, after the judgment in January 2018, the hospital provided CIN with the requested information, according to which 14 donators donated medical equipment worth 818.610 KM to this hospital.

Due to the suspicion that certain companies, based on the donation of laboratory equipment, secured victory at public calls for procurement of reagents, CIN requested identical data from 34 BiH hospitals. The hospital "Nevesinje" and the Special Hospital for Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation "Mlječanica" in Kozarska Dubica replied that they had not received any donations, while the other hospitals provided data on received donations in the total value of 176 million KM.

“CIN has discovered that the donors included medical equipment dealers who donated 2.2 million KM worth of equipment to seven hospitals. After that, they concluded contracts with the same hospitals for the purchase of reagents and consumables for the apparatus worth 14.7 million marks,” reads the announcement.

The statement adds that most of the contracts were concluded either after the open procedure in which these donors were the only bidder or through the negotiation procedure, on the grounds that these were exclusive rights. The CIN research shows that suppliers are not always exclusive, but that they have arranged the market in such way, limiting dealers and traders regionally, so that they are not a competition to each other.

“The BiH Public Procurement Agency says that such business is not in line with the Law, which provides for equal treatment for all suppliers. They believe that healthcare institutions are obliged to examine the market in connection with the purchase of consumables that accompany the donated apparatus. However, such an obligation is not clearly defined by the Law, so it is not applied in practice,” CIN stated.

(FENA)
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