TigerIT refutes World Bank allegations of irregularities in national smartcard project

Bangladeshi firm TigerIT has trashed the charges of irregularities for which the World Bank has blacklisted it, alleging the global lender applied “no fair trial rules”.

It issued a statement on Tuesday saying the bdnews24.com report on Word Bank sanctions on the firm caused “confusion” as these “do not represent the entire picture”.

Before publishing the report on July 30, bdnews24.com had called TigerIT Managing Director Ziaur Rahman several times for comments on the allegations brought by the World Bank, but his phone was unreachable.

Tapanendra Narayan Hore, a director at TigerIT, neither received bdnews24.com calls, nor did he respond to queries sent via SMS.  

In response to the claims of TigerIT, the World Bank has stood by its actions, saying it “takes allegations of fraud and corruption impacting Bank-financed projects very seriously”.

The global lender has hit TigerIT with debarment of minimum nine and a half years along with the possibility of conditional release after the end of the period.

Sanctions on its Managir Director Ziaur Rahman will be in place for minimum six and a half years.

The World Bank cited “collusive, corrupt, and obstructive practices” by TigerIT and Ziaur in an announcement on the sanctions on Apr 24.

TigerIT said the World Bank debarment on the firm was done in an “internal and private proceedings” of the global lender, in which “no fair trial rules were applied”.

When in each and every court the charges have to be proven with reliable evidence to “beyond reasonable doubt” level, World Bank “decides on the basis of likelihood”, the statement from the firm says.

The World Bank’s own “standard” called “more likely than not” means that “just suspicion and bare allegations without any true evidence allow World Bank to blacklist any entity”, according to the statement.

“Under its processes, World Bank is the investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury and executioner,” TigerIT said. “Fundamental rights of trial by fair and impartial tribunal has been denied.”

“World Bank is creating its own definitions of misconducts, which are not in line with definitions as per law in any country. This is how under the umbrella of democracy and fair competition World Bank is eliminating some companies to promote others,” it added.

TigerIT alleged the World Bank and its forei8gn consultants prepared the tender specification for the smartcard project again after being “failed to replace the entire system with one led by a foreign entity”.

If there was any corruption related to the tender specification, it could have been “done by World Bank and at the World Bank level only”, the IT firm said, claiming all the specifications and even tender results were reviewed and approved by World Bank’s division in Washington, US.

In January 2015 the tender was awarded to a French company called Oberthur Technologies. The second lowest bidder was a company called Saffran Morpho, according to the TigerIT statement.

Morpho was “initially complaining” about its competitor Oberthur bidding far below the budget set by World Bank, but afterwards Morpho  and Oberthur became one company and changed their names to IDEMIA, the statement said.

IDEMIA won the tender and “tried to increase” the solution price to be paid by Bangladesh Election Commission as it was “not at all happy” with the profit it could make out of the project, TigerIT said.

“At the same time all the payments due by IDEMIA to TigerIT (for already delivered components) were withheld without any reason,” the company said, noting that it had worked in the project to create a biometric database of citizens and issue national ID cards.

These cards are supposed to be replaced with smartcards with electronic chips.

The EC is now going to issue the smartcards with government funds after the World Bank pulled out of the project following the cancellation of the EC’s contract with Oberthur.

State-owned company Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory is now implementing the project to provide 100 million citizens with the smart NID cards.

IDEMIA “wanted to remove TigerIT from the project, not pay TigerIT’s due invoices, increase IDEMIA’s profit and most importantly gain direct access to the national database”, according to TigerIT.

World Bank put a “sham” debarment on IDEMIA when it became clear that the entity would to implement the project and IDEMIA decided to “pretend it cooperated with World Bank and by making false statements put the blame on TigerIT”, the Bangladeshi company alleged.

It also alleged World Bank investigators tried to force TigerIT to make statements against the country and to disclose all the data it had access to, including top secret Bangladesh information, on “motivation by IDEMIA and its international lawyers”.

When TigerIT refused to do that, it was punished for obstruction, it alleged.

World Bank’s other allegations were that TigerIT helped IDEMIA to modify the card specification in the tender in favour of IDEMIA, according to the statement.

“It was kind of absurd at TigerIT was not producing the cards and had no commercial interest in the card business,” it said.

“TigerIT’s focus in this project has always been on the software and nobody including World Bank has any complain about the software provided by TigerIT. World Bank in its report on the project is even claiming a success for TigerIT’s software,” it added.

World Bank Country Director Mercy Tembon said in a statement the global lender is “firmly committed to ensure that resources are used for the purpose intended and for the benefit of Bangladesh’s population”.

“We take allegations of fraud and corruption impacting Bank-financed projects very seriously. When the World Bank finds credible evidence, we refer our findings to the concerned government," she said.